It is vital that women in the agri-food sector receive support to participate and lead, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said.

An Taoiseach stated that the Government is supporting female farmers through CAP measures including the 60% grant rate under the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Schemes (TAMS), which will be made available to women from next year onwards.

All CAP measures are now developed with a “gender-aware perspective” to ensure women face no inherent barriers to participating in farming, he said.

The comments were made at the Irish Country Living and the Irish Farmers Journal annual Women & Agriculture conference on Thursday where an Taoiseach told attendees that the number of herd owners owned by female farmers was not indicative of women’s share of the workload on farms.

“The role of women within agriculture is, I think, increasingly mentioned, but rarely fully acknowledged,” an Taoiseach commented.

“And agriculture is still largely - it is perceived to be but I think we could discuss the ins and outs of that at greater length - a largely male-dominated sector, and of course the specific contributions that women provide to the agriculture sector, alongside the distinct challenges faced by women in agriculture, are often not adequately recognised.

“While some 12% of herd numbers are held by women, that does not tell the entire story of the effort, skill and sacrifice made by women on the family farm both inside and outside the farmgate.

“For the first time by any Government, we have designed several measures in this CAP which will, we hope, support greater gender equality.”

An Taoiseach also spoke of agriculture meeting its legally binding 25% emissions cut as being a challenge to which the sector must respond with resilience.

Resilience proven during pandemic

He stated that the agri-food sector’s resilience had been proven during the COVID-19 pandemic, when exports dropped by only 2% in 2020 before rebounding in 2021.

“Agri-food actually exports fell by 2% in 2020 at the height of the pandemic but then rebounded dramatically in 2021,” he went on.

“That really demonstrates the ability of our farmers to thrive in the face of challenges and we now have to try and harness that capacity in terms of the challenges that are ahead, particularly climate.

“We will support farmers in that transition,” he said.