500,000 fewer suckler cows with no economic impact assessment?

Huge changes are on the way for suckler farming as we know it. Taking Teagasc/FAPRI predictions into account, we will have almost halved our suckler cow industry by 2030 compared to the number of suckler cows we had in the country in 2013.

Just over 44% of the Irish suckler herd will have been culled between 2013 and 2030. This cull has been slowly taking place over the last number of years, with a 4.6% drop in suckler cow numbers being recorded between 2022 and 2023. This is the largest drop in numbers since 2014.

During the same period, dairy cow numbers, if the Teagasc projections are correct, will have grown from 1.2 million cows in 2013 to 1.8 million cows in 2030.

Nobody can argue that for many farmers who were working on large blocks of good land, the correct decision was to enter dairying or expand their business.

What successive Governments and EU policy have forgotten are the farmers who don’t have the option to move to the more lucrative dairying business.

Some have argued that it’s simple economics and that we should let the market dictate what type of farming takes place on land, but if we followed this, we would plant the west of Ireland with trees and leave farming to those in the east.

Cow numbers have reduced and will reduce more on the back of reduced supports. The suckler cow cannot survive anywhere in the world without access to cheap land, cheap labour, hormones or supports.

EU model

The EU model was to support beef production and the family farm model, but in the next 10 years we will stray from this model.

Bigger will be better under the new regime, with larger farms having more financial fire power to swallow up smaller farms. We have already seen this starting to happen in the south and east.

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, I still can’t get my head around how effectively culling a suckler cow farmed in an extensive operation in the west of Ireland and replacing her with a dairy cow in the south will solve the issues that we face.

Also, nobody else is able to tell me the economic or environmental benefits on the same. Yes, our national reductions will be met, but at what cost to local economies?

Taking a look at the figures in Table 1 (below), we see a very changed picture for our suckler industry in 2030. Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary will all have less than 50% of the cows they had in 2013 come 2030.

The 2030 figure is arrived at by applying a 29% reduction in suckler cows to the 2022 figure.

On an individual county basis, this could be higher or lower in some counties.

One of the most astonishing oversights in all of the suckler debate is that no one has thought to conduct an economic impact assessment of the projections and how they will affect rural Ireland.

I wonder if a change of this size and scale was to take place in Dublin 4 or Cork city, would we have the same silence from our politicians?

The Irish Farmers Journal/KPMG report published in 2021 showed that a 30% reduction in emissions would lead to the loss of 60,000 jobs, many of which are based in rural Ireland.

Surely a 29% reduction in suckler cow numbers deserves an economic appraisal and outline on what the alternatives are for thousands of farmers?