Stephen Cadogan: TTIP yet another worrying ‘last straw’ for beef farmers
Now, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney and other industry leaders could be forgiven for frustration at the stop-go fortunes of the industry.
They need to get out front and spell out how the Irish beef industry can proceed, in harmony with two overwhelming processes which threaten to steam-roller cattle farming.
Already heavily subsidised by EU payments, and in turn by farmers who choose to invest those payments in it, cattle farming does not have a secure foundation.
The No 1 threat to it is that cattle farming will have to shrink to accommodate the expanding dairy industry.
Farmers can have no argument with that, if dairy industry expansion is successful enough to squeeze out marginallty profitable cattle farming, whether through land rental or purchase, or providing services to dairy farmers such as heifer rearing or fodder provision.
But there is also a mostly unspoken understanding that it is beef farming that must give way so that Irish agriculture’s total greenhouse gas emissions do not go through the roof due to the Food Harvest 2020 expansion.
The No 2 threat to Irish cattle farming is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the free trade negotiations between the EU and United States which started in July, 2013.
Cattle farmers take a gamble every time they buy an animal and hope that it will profitably become beef down the road.
That’s probably a 50/50 bet, an even chance — and cattle farmers probably rate the chance of a TTIP deal ever being signed about one chance at about one chance in six, because the EU has never before agreed such a big trade deal, and efforts to swing world-scale trade deals failed, time after time.
But the odds against may have to be trimmed now.
What’s different in 2015 is that the EU economy is struggling, and is trying to prepare for a future when 90% of world demand is expected to be generated outside the EU.
EU leaders estimate that if they complete all current free trade talks (more than seven deals are being negotiated, including TTIP), they can add 2.2% to the EU’s GDP or €275 billion, which is the equivalent economic boost to adding a country as big as Austria or Denmark to the EU economy.
These agreements could generate 2.2 million new jobs, increasing the EU workforce 1%.
Ireland goes along with this thinking. It is expected that agreeing TTIP would boost our economy 1.1%, adding €2.4 billion to real national income. But that outcome would include winners and losers.
Pharmaceutical, information and communications technology, insurance, and med-tech sectors are expected to make strong gains — but lesser gains are expected for agriculture overall — and the value of Irish beef output is predicted to probably shrink as much as €50m.
The beef setback would be due to a quota for US hormone-free beef being allowed to enter Europe free of import duty.
However, the value of Irish dairying export could increase by 10%.
Irish pig and poultry meats exports would also be reduced by TTIP.
It will be 2016 at least before Irish livestock farmers know the result of the TTIP negotiations.
Their spirits were lifted this year by Minister Coveney’s successes in opening the US and Chinese markets to Irish beef, as well as several smaller export markets.
The Beef Roundtable Forum was also established, a welcome forum for negotiating price transparency, quality payment system, quality assurance, weight and age specifications, and developing beef producer organisations.
Farmers splashed out big money on store cattle in the spring, confident that the future for beef was brighter.
However, TTIP and Ireland’s obligations to reduce greenhouse gases are worrying clouds over beef farming in the medium and longer term.
