Creed pledges to maximise BEEP €40 for the farmer
With calves born to beef breed dams in the year to July down from 727,571 in 2017 to 701,833 this year, the Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot (BEEP) scheme in 2019 will deliver a timely €40 payment per suckler weanling.
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The new €20 million incentive for suckler farmers is added to an estimated support equivalent to about €500 per suckler cow, on average, from the Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP), direct payments, and grant schemes.
First announced in the recent Budget, BEEP is designed to generate extra data used by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation to improve the genetic merit of the beef herd, enabling it to deliver bigger weanlings, be more fertile and easy calving, in order to drive down its carbon footprint.
BEEP will involve measuring the live weight of the calf at weaning, which shows weaning efficiency (weight as a percentage of the cow’s live weight).
Full details of the scheme will be announced in due course.
“My ambition is to make that scheme as simple as possible and as cost neutral as possible for the farmer, and to deliver the maximum amount of that into the farmer’s pocket,” said Agriculture Minister Michael Creed last week.
“I confirm that the scheme will be open to all farmers and not just current participants in the BDGP.”
“It is not a coupled payment. A coupled payment would run contrary to everything the industry has been striving to achieve over recent years, which is improving the quality of the herd.
“That is the direction of this initiative, and it is compatible with the objectives of the BDGP, where currently minimal data are being collected on the weanling efficiency”.
On BEEP costs for farmers, Mr Creed acknowledged not everybody has access to a weighing scales.
“I am satisfied we can get to a situation where the majority of the payment will be to the farmers.
“There will be some costs, insofar as they will have to access weighing scales, but I believe we can do that in a very cost-efficient manner.”
He said the pilot scheme will be followed by evaluation.
“I am confident that the data which will be collected and fed into the process will be significant and will ensure the initiative is mainstreamed.
“Until we see the data, however, and see how successful it has been, it would be premature to say it will definitely be mainstreamed. “
Suckler farmers will also be significant beneficiaries of the additional €23m in funding announced in the Budget for the areas of natural constraint (ANC) scheme, said Minister Creed.
On current price difficulties in the beef trade, he emphasised that competition law precludes him or his Department having any role in determining market prices for any commodity.
He said the beef farmer being a price taker, as a stand-alone supplier, is a problem, but producer organisations can give the farmer more power, to be more efficient in purchasing inputs and gain power when negotiating carcase specifications and supply on the basis of prices.
“That is missing from the architecture, but it is very much part of the architecture of other countries.”
In February 2016, a statutory instrument was signed to give a legal basis for the Department of Agriculture to maintain a register of recognised beef producer organisations.
“We have tried to promote producer organisations to avoid a situation where a farmer drives up and delivers cattle as a price taker.
“Through organisation, a large number of farmers are able to engage with the processing sector from a position of strength.
“That is the advantage of producer organisations.
“In other big beef economies such as France, producer organisations are a key part of the architecture and enable farmers to engage from a position of greater strength than they can as single farmers.
“We have the legislative framework for them.
“We have approved facilitators, which have not yet been activated.
“There is a role there that needs to be exploited.”
Another factor affecting prices this year is significant cattle slaughter in that country due to fodder issues in the Scandinavian countries where Ireland would normally have a market for cow beef during the summer, revealed the Minister.
