The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) will host an online webinar focusing on farm input cost challenges and strategies for farmers to mitigate them on Thursday 20 January at 8pm.

The webinar, titled Input price challenges – impact, outlook and strategies to mitigate, will have a range of experts who will assess the year ahead and provide strategies to offset rising costs.

Experts speaking during the event will include Grassland Agro CEO Liam Woulfe, risk consultant with StoneX Rory Deverell, Teagasc research officer David Wall and IFA European office director Liam MacHale.

The speakers will provide an outlook for fertiliser markets and feed inputs, strategies to mitigate the increased cost of fertiliser and possible EU interventions.

Input costs

The increased cost of doing business for Irish farmers threatens to wipe out some of the “modest gains” made during 2021, according to IFA president Tim Cullinan.

Speaking ahead of Thursday’s webinar, he said: “Family farms could be overwhelmed by the steep increases in costs such as feed, energy and fertiliser.

“We need the [European] Commission, Government and industry to respond quickly and offer tangible financial supports, such as the removal of EU anti-dumping duties and low-cost finance options, to minimise cashflow pressure on-farm.”

Fertiliser

The IFA warned that at the moment, farmers throughout the country will be planning how best to negotiate record fertiliser prices, limited supplies and elevated feed prices.

Cullinan said: “As an industry, we celebrated the announcement of record agri-food exports last week. It can’t be forgotten that all this product originated from farms through the hard work of farm families."

He called on Government to support the farming community during times of income downturn or financial pressures in order to avoid a “far wider” impact.

Register for the webinar here.