Low income farmers ‘facing extinction’
Brian Lyons, smallholder development worker with West Offaly Partnership, said small farmers are living just above the poverty line and are simply “guardians of the land”.
He said many, with families are, are trying to survive on very low incomes — €15,000 a year or less, and supplements such as farm assist and EU subsistence, were keeping them off the poverty line.
The Offaly development officer said there has been a surge in the number of small farmers applying for farm assist — a basic social welfare payment to help supplement income.
“They are really struggling. The welfare payment is a safety net keeping them from the brink of poverty.”
Mr Lyons said it was a sad reality, but claimed that of about 110,000 farmers across the country, there was only room for about 10,000. “We need to shed about 100,000 farmers, but where are they going to go? What are they going to do?
“There is complete apathy within the community, 60% of the farmers I deal with are 55 and over.”
Many of the younger farmers, said Mr Lyons, are those who have been forced back to unprofitable farms and have only returned to the land by necessity. “Farms are worth a lot as an asset, but costs are too high for small holdings to earn a living from,” he said.
“There are lots of little things farmers could do, there is potential, farming is part of our heritage and they are our food producers so we need to retain certain numbers of them, but at the moment there is no living to be made for small farmers.”
My Lyons maintains in the current climate, the problem will come to head in the next few years.
“Ten years ago it was fine because they had other jobs, but what will happen is a conundrum for everyone.”
Katie Crowley, who runs the small holder initiative in Duhallow, on the Cork and Kerry border, said it was not viable for small farmers to rely on farm income. She said farmers would have to consider off-farm employment options, or expand in order to survive.
Ms Crowley said once part-time farmers were now full-time, but had let the farm slip and needed help and support to make it a sustainable prospect.
Both Ms Crowley and Mr Lyons maintain many of the farmers they deal with are isolated.
“They don’t see or talk to anyone from one day to the next,” she said.
According to Teagasc there are currently approximately 112,000 full and part-time farmers in the country. This is a drop from 141,500 in 2000 and more than 170,000 in 1991.
