Stephen Cadogan: Teagasc advice ‘mission critical’ after 44%loss of staff
Support for the Teagasc case has come the top in the EU, with Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan emphasising Teagasc’s vital role in rural Ireland.
He only pointed out the obvious, that farmers need knowledge and advice to increase productivity, and Teagasc has an enormous role to play in achieving that.
But it hasn’t been obvious to successive governments, which allowed Teagasc advisor numbers to fall 42% since 2000, and 44% since 2007, when advisor numbers peaked.
In contrast, Department of Agriculture staff numbers fell only 33% from 2004 to 2014.
Teagasc is described as a non-commercial state body operating under the aegis of the Department of Agriculture. However, much of its work at farm level is done in competition with private industry, in the form of agricultural consultants — a sector which expanded as Teagasc was weakened by public service recruitment embargos.
Teagasc works with 60,000 farmers per annum, nearly half of the country’s active farmers, and about 43,000 of these are contracted clients.
While advisor numbers fell 44%, the number of farmer clients using Teagasc advice services increased from about 40,000 in 2000 to over 43,000 at the end of last year.
Few commercial organisations could match the rise in productivity achieved in Teagasc. But the rise in client numbers per advisor is not sustainable, from the perspective of workload or service quality, warns Teagasc Director Professor Gerry Boyle.
Yet clients continue to reveal a very high level of satisfaction with the Teagasc advisory service, as measured by the organisation’s surveys — perhaps because it is independent of commercial pressures or bias, and based on rigorous scientific research carried out by other sections of the Teagasc staff of 1,150.
Potential new Teagasc clients (mainly young farmers) cannot be recruited as clients by Teagasc in its weakened state, says Professor Boyle — any spare capacity to cater for them has been exhausted.
He said it was possible to manage the Teagasc advisory workload with the steadily declining staff since 2007 through changes in work practices and realignment of resources.
Productivity has been assisted by growth in discussion groups. Teagasc moved to work closely with the private sector, for example in joint programmes with dairy co-operatives and others in agri-business.
Despite the huge changes within the organisation, Teagasc has more than played its part in the attainment of Food Harvest 2020 targets.
But it hasn’t been given credit for that role; instead it has been weakened to a critical point.
Staffing has reached a critical stage now because the public sector policy included periods of strong recruitment followed by embargos. As a result, Teagasc has fewer than 30 advisors aged under 35. And about 70 are aged over 55.
Professor Boyle says that a large number of advisors will retire in the coming five-year period, leading to a precipitous fall in adviser numbers — declining to 182 by 2020, in the absence of recruitment.
Some counties have been hit worse than others.
When milk quotas were abolished in the spring, the 520 dairy farmers in Co Meath had already gone seven months without a dairy adviser.
Those planning for expansion and growth have not been adequately catered for with advice in business planning. This year, Teagasc was unable to process the high volumes of GLAS applications received nationally, in the first tranche of the new agri-environment scheme.
In a recent statement, Minister Coveney said his Department continued to work closely with Teagasc to evaluate requests for “mission critical appointments”.
Surely, 520 dairy farmers without a dedicated advisor in Co Meath, and hundreds of other farmers across the country, is “mission critical”, especially ahead of an expected spate of retirements which would leave thousands of farmers without Teagasc advice.
