Little interest in sheep aid
Lowland farmers with about a dozen ewes will need six weeks storage for waste.
So the need for grant aid is minor, compared to cattle or pigs.
Nevertheless, only 1% of flock owners applying for grants indicates a worrying lack of ambition, when you consider that if Irish sheepmeat output continues to decline, processing plant closures and diminishing presence in the vitally important French market could leave Ireland only “a bit player” in the EU sheepmeat scene.
The ewe premium triggered huge flock expansion here, with ewe numbers jumping from only 1.5 million in 1980 to 4.75 million in 1992, followed by gradual but consistent flock shrinkage back to 3.5 million in 2005.
Since the Single Payment came in, farmers seem to have been selling off the ewes and ewe lambs which each earned a premium in previous years.
The fear is that the life may be going out of sheep farming in Ireland, with a lack of new entrants and new ideas.
If so, farmers in New Zealand are only too ready to pounce on the lucrative EU market, followed by the Australians if tariffs are reduced in WTO negotiations.
Hence Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan’s recent warning that the €50 million investment package she has announced for beef and sheepmeat processing may offer the only, and last, opportunity to develop a competitive sheepmeat sector.
Farmers have welcomed the Strategy Report for the sector, which she launched this year, but it is hard to argue with farmers’ case that a higher lamb price is the essential ingredient for success. Teagasc estimated that farmers with sheep as their main enterprise earned less than €16,000 in 2005, on average. Better rewards will be needed if they are to play the role set out for them by the Sheep Industry Development Strategy Group. The Group said the industry needs 3.5 to four million ewes, producing quality carcases. Progressive commercial farmers would have to act as pioneers for change, through better sheep breeding to satisfy market requirements. Sheep farming must be made attractive to a new generation, many of them part time farmers. Urgent attention was called for maintaining hill sheep flocks, which the Group said are essential for sustaining the mountain environment, and which could be an important base for better sheep breeding.
Achieving price returns closer to EU levels was seen as priority, with the Group setting a target of 95% of the EU average price.
Clearly, a bit of investment now in paying these higher prices could pay off well for Irish sheepmeat processors who position themselves to fill more of the growing sheepmeat deficit in the EU. The consumers they are aiming at rightly see lamb as a healthy meat, and it is the meat of choice among the Muslim population, which is growing in Europe. Its image as a luxury product and the preserve of a declining and aging consumer sector, must be worked on; new sheepmeat customers must be pulled in.
At the other end of the scale farmers need to be brought onside. They have been hit by destocking on the hills and onerous sheep identification requirements. The most traditional of our enterprises has been hit hard by decoupling, and over-regulation. Then, last May, processors cut lamb prices by 34c per kg in two weeks, ending up with a spring lamb price €1.10 per kg behind what UK farmers were paid. ICSA spokesman Mervyn Sunderland questioned how a farmer could rear and feed and transport an animal for the prices on offer, and warned of the danger of collapsing the sector.
Sheep farmers need encouragement, or it will become a hobby enterprise at best, not a competitive, vibrant business which can survive and prosper.
