Leased land farmers may lose premia
And farmers who have been successfully fattening heifers or cull cows for the factory could be left with very little entitlement to premia payments, if the proposals in the CAP mid-term review are accepted later this month.
The association has been concentrating on the rights of dairy farmers, and farmers who have been leasing land or participating in the retirement scheme, as they presented their latest “proposals on the proposals”, at country-wide meetings.
Speaking to farmers in Limerick, IFA Livestock Committee Secretary Kevin Kinsella said that it now appears less likely in the EU proposals that farmers would be allowed trade premia rights without selling land to which the rights are attached.
He warned at the IFA meeting at Limerick Racecourse that farmers who have been leasing land “are going to end up with no premia rights”.
IFA want the new version of the CAP to require farmers to have at least 50% of their previous stocking level and 80% of previous land use if they are to qualify for premia.
Premia without the necessity to be actively involved in farming would be politically unacceptable within the EU to tax payers and could not be sustained, said Mr Kinsella.
ICMSA has highlighted the threat to the incomes of calf and weanling producers posed by the proposals.
“I am surprised that, to date, no real account has been taken of the massive losses that calf and weanling producers will suffer under full decoupling’, ICMSA President Pat O’Rourke said.
He has told Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh that a 40 cow dairy farmer selling all male calves as weanlings without drawing down the premia would be about 4,500 per year worse off if the current CAP proposals are accepted.
The farmer would lose about 250 per head on 18 weanling bulls sold per annum.
