Government budget focus must be jobs and exports
The 2013 farm income results highlight the major challenges farmers across all enterprises face in dealing with huge volatility in both weather and prices.
Once again, despite these difficulties, agriculture has recorded positive export growth. Food and drink exports increased to almost €10bn and the sector experienced significant employment growth last year.
In this year’s Budget, the Government must deliver for farm families in three key areas. Firstly, the Budget allocation for agriculture has to reflect fully the EU funding secured for the new Rural Development Plan. This means adequate provision under all farm schemes – GLAS, TAMS, ANC and Beef Genomics – and payments in 2015.
Secondly, a pro-work Budget that reduces the burden of income-related taxes on low and middle-income families. And, thirdly, the retention of hard-won taxation reliefs available to farm families, and new measures to address extreme income volatility and encourage restructuring and transfer.
Under the new Rural Development Programme (RDP), there is an overall allocation of €2.1bn of EU funding and €1.9bn of national funding to 2020. Over €500m of funding for RDP farm schemes must be provided in this October’s budget.
To maximise the economic return on this investment, it is critical that Ireland’s Rural Development Plan is implemented from Autumn 2014.
Expenditure priorities for farming in Budget 2015 include the commencement of contracts for the new agri-environ-mental GLAS scheme in early 2015, with 30,000 farmers allowed into the scheme in its first year and payments disbursed in 2015; and allocation of €30m for the TAMS scheme in 2015 to fund on-farm investment programmes across all sectors.
Other expenditure priorities include funding of €52m for the Beef Data & Genomic scheme to support the vulnerable suckler sector; and increased capital funding allocations for the horticulture, forestry and aquaculture sectors to achieve output targets and employment growth.
The key objectives for IFA in the independent review of taxation and for Budget 2015 are to ensure valuable tax reliefs, critical to the development and growth of the agri sector, are maintained. These include stock relief, agricultural relief and capital allowances.
We want to secure new tax incentives to drive structural improvements by incentivising land transfer, mobility and investment, examine how the taxation system can better accommodate the extreme volatility in farm incomes, and how tax returns can be simplified to cut compliance costs.
Measures must be provided to support investment at farm and industry level. In addition, the taxation system must encourage greater land mobility and earlier lifetime transfers.
IFA will mount a campaign between now and the announcement of the Budget in October. Our network of voluntary officers will be informing politicians about farmer concerns as the Budget takes shape.
We will also be seeking support from the wider agri-food community to press our case with Oireachtas members ahead of the final decisions.
