Irish delegation set for next week's farm council meeting in Brussels

The meeting will consider the market support measures needed to address the current farm income crisis in Europe. Discussions will also be held with the EU Commission on direct payments and amendments to the Rural Development Plan (RDP).

IFA chair Jer Bergin will lead the IFA delegation of ten, which includes the four regional chairmen and representatives from the dairy, pig, grain, sheep, livestock and rural development sectors. The IFA delegation will then meet with the Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney to consider the proposals from the meeting.

Bergin said Minister Coveney must obtain a suspension of superlevy payments for 2016 to give farmers real cash flow relief.

“In addition, he must also demand the suspension of import tariffs on fertiliser, to create greater competition on EU markets, and reduce farmers’ costs meaningfully," he said.

IFA is calling for a comprehensive review of the intervention scheme, insisting that intervention buy-in must continue at full price this year, as well as an extension for private storage, and the removal of penalties for early withdrawal in the SMP scheme. Also, the maximum limit to state aids must be doubled to €30,000 to facilitate national farmer support initiatives, IFA says.

Ireland 'lacks' any clear plan

Meanwhile, ICMSA president John Comer said that Ireland's submission lacked "any clear plan as to how to realign supply-demand in the medium-term ... without any intention to call for the rise in intervention price necessary to give some signal to EU milk suppliers that they won’t just be abandoned to a whole year of below-cost production and the bankruptcy that goes with that."

Comer repeated his organisation’s conviction that an intervention price rise to 28 c/litre was the only option that would give stability fast enough to stop the growing panic.

“The EU has two choices here: they either ensure that we get a fair margin from the retail corporations or they, in some sense, make up the difference.

Ireland, for our part, just seems content to continue tinkering around the edges in terms of storage volumes without any serious attempt to get to the heart of the matter which is yet another incomes wipe-out for EU dairy farmers.

"France openly supports supply-side measures - which the Germans have already said they will not consider - and Ireland, for our part, just seems content to continue tinkering around the edges in terms of storage volumes without any serious attempt to get to the heart of the matter which is yet another incomes wipe-out for EU dairy farmers.

"Every other link in the dairy chain is making a margin except the group on which the whole multi-billion euro sector rests: the farmers," Comer said. He will be attending Monday's meeting alongside ICMSA deputy president Pat McCormack, general secretary John Enright and dairy chair Gerald Quaine.

Talks of the EU Commission agreeing to French demands for voluntary milk supply controls at next Monday's meeting is "a very worrying development," ICOS dairy policy executive TJ Flanagan said.

"It makes no sense for European farmers to reduce supply whilst the rest of the world is free to produce. Europe reducing would just burden us with supply measurement and control systems and restrict our ability to capitalise on the upturn when it does come.

"Secondly, voluntary measures are just the thin end of the wedge. The act of setting up these measures is the difficult bit; it wouldn’t take much to convert them into compulsory measures if the market was bad enough. Or worse still, to apply a levy to Irish expansion to compensate French or Spanish farmers who want to reduce," he said.

Crisis reserve fund

Earlier this week, John Comer from ICMSA said that the €400m in the crisis reserve fund should also be accessed to help dairy farmers.

However, ICSA general secretary Eddie Punch said that to use the crisis reserve fund exclusively for dairy farmers "would be outrageous". The solution, he said, was not to confiscate the money from the beef and sheep farmers, who were "worse off" than dairy farmers.

We understand that dairy farmers are going through a difficult time, but their income is still substantially higher than the beef and sheep farmers. That's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

"That fund is the farmers' own money, taken from the basis payment, and it will be returned to all if it’s not used. We understand that dairy farmers are going through a difficult time, but their income is still substantially higher than the beef and sheep farmers. That's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

"We need to take a serious look at the food chain, and how the supermarkets and processors are getting more and more, and the farmers less. That's what needs to be done," he told Irish Farmers Journal.

Kerry Group and Glanbia both had profitable years, even though there's meant to be a crisis, according to Punch, while beef processors are going from strength to strength, and supermarkets are increasing margins.

"The EU Commission needs to get aggressive about this. An auditor is needed on EU level with the powers to look at exactly who is making what, so we can see who is taking the money," he said.

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