Farmers frustrated by joint committee on agriculture

Following the appearance at the joint committee on agriculture by the organisation called the Organic Farmers Representative Body, the Department’s organic unit made an appearance.

Paul Dillon from the organic unit addressed supports, double funding, payment delays and certification bodies.

Dillon pointed to the 60% increase in payments, the targeting of tillage and red clover and the general success of the scheme this year, with “870 applications in its first tranche.

"To put this in context, the highest number of applications ever received previously was 380 applications in 2010.

"In addition, over 500 of the 870 applicants are new entrants to organic farming.”

This will leave Ireland with 1600 organic farmers and 60,000 hectares certified organic.

Joan Furlong, also of the organic unit, pointed out that there will be 100 new tillage producers in the organic scheme, though she did not break this number down into tillage only and mixed tillage and livestock.

(In organic, the tillage numbers tend to be made up primarily of farmers growing their own feed, and sometimes selling some on to Flahavans in the case of oats or to other farmers for their feed requirements)

For double funding, he pointed out that “when similar actions are in place under both schemes” in this case GLAS and the organic farming scheme, “in such cases it is a clear stipulation of the European legislation that a risk of double-funding exists, that this must be explicitly addressed”.

For both schemes “income forgone and costs incurred” are the reason for the payments.

“It was not an issue in REPS because the regulation was changed since REPS,” Dillon emphasised.

As for payments, late and manual, he apologised for the delays, caused by an industrial dispute.

He added: “I was asked about a manual versus automated system. Our original plan was that we would be able to transfer all of the existing scheme participants into the new scheme and that would all be automated via an online system.

"However, the Commission told us clearly that it would not allow us to do that. As such, we had to come up with a hybrid system.

"That is why we are stuck with some of the manual payments.”

The departmental subvention for certification bodies was named as €150 per visit.

A supposed issue was the number of certification bodies, too high at five, it was claimed.

At no point did anyone point out the blindingly obvious , to all intents and purposes there are only two in operation for the vast majority of farmers, the Organic Trust and IOFGA.

The other three operate almost exclusively in fish farming.

Austria was cited as an exemplar, and it is, it has an overall representative body.

Ireland’s organic sector is chronically incapable of establishing such a body.

Mountain farming and organics came up as an issue, but, unfortunately, the core issue was not addressed.

On commonage up in the hills and mountains, it’s simply not possible for the stocking rate to get up high enough to be at the organic rate.

Usually, organic means a lower stocking rate, but in the hills and mountains, organic rules would impose an impractically high stocking rate.

And farmers are penalised for not reaching the organic stocking rate.

If something could be done about this, many more hill farmers could enter the organic farming scheme: the high hills and mountains are very close to organic in consumer’s minds and in reality.

While farmers’ winter feed costs would be higher in organic, otherwise there would not be major changes required.

“We are open to constructive suggestions,” Paul Dillon of the organic unit said.

Not penalising organic hill farmers for having a lower stocking rate in mountainous areas is such a suggestion.