"Small farms should be compensated for environmental and social work"

Managing their farms in an environmentally friendly way was also cited as an important reason for farming by almost all respondents.

Tegasc's Head of Economics Trevor Donnellan. Picture: Teagasc

Small farms (defined as selling no more than €8,000 of output per year) are "almost the ideal type of agriculture from an environmental perspective", according to Teagasc researchers who surveyed them.

Unfortunately, they have "very, very low levels of income coming in from farming".