The cut to Ireland’s nitrates derogation and the impact of cow banding represent a twin-attack on the family dairy farm system that built Ireland’s multi-billion euro dairy system, ICMSA president Pat McCormack has said.
Ireland’s derogation limit is likely to be cut from 250kg of organic nitrogen per hectare (N/ha) to 220kg N/ha on foot of Ireland not meeting the required water quality metrics in order to retain the derogation.
A map shows that farmers in vast swathes of the country will likely see their derogation cut.
McCormack has hit out at the Government on the matter, stating that its decision “to designate almost the entire country for a drop” in the derogation marks the end of the current Government’s “cynical pretence about managed reduction of dairy volumes and the real intent now stands revealed”.
He said the Government’s final unveiling of what he said was obviously “their true intention all along” will rebound on the Government, because it will force local politicians and TDs to confront the destructive reality of Government policy.
“Its’s out there now - the almost nationwide reduction of N, regardless of geographic consideration or improving water quality, and nobody can plead ignorance anymore,” he said.
Elections
The ICMSA leader called on “every single rural politician in Ireland to show this Government what rural Ireland intends doing over the next rounds of elections”.
He said there are “anti-farming elements” in Government and that these “elements do not want our commercial family farm sector reduced, they want it gone”.
“These decisions, these attacks, will fall - and are designed to fall - on the dairy farmers with less than 100 cows. In other words, the majority of Irish dairy farms,” he said.
Delay
McCormack appealed to the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue to delay making a proposal on “these ruinous ideas” to the European Commission, so that sensible proposals can be put in place that will not fatally wound Ireland’s most famous and world-renowned family dairy farm sector.
On Thursday, the Agriculture Water Quality Working Group was presented with the water quality data.
Commission decision
The data will be sent to the European Commission by the Department of Agriculture and the Commission will ultimately decide whether to cut the derogation or not.
In awarding Ireland the derogation, the Commission imposed conditionality around water quality trends.
Its implementing decision states that where water quality is poor, or where worsening trends occur over the period 2021-2022, the maximum livestock manure N/ha limit must be reduced from 250kg N/ha to 220kg N/ha from January 2024.
Derogation limit set to drop to 220kg across majority of Ireland