Introducing a coupled payment for the suckler cow now or under the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would undermine progress in the last few years, Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed has said.

Speaking exclusively to the Irish Farmers Journal at BEEF 2018, he said that a coupled payment would be to the detriment of Ireland's climate change obligations.

"If we were to do that, the department would be accused, and rightly so, of not connecting the dots and not having joined-up thinking.

"If we have a coupled payment, it will drive numbers at the expense of quality," Creed said.

“In CAP 2020 there will be provision for some level of coupling. We are at a very early stage. But as a general principal, we decoupled some years ago and I think it was the right thing. It allowed farmers to farm the marketplace rather than being obliged to keep animals on which they weren’t making any return.

"I personally think re-coupling would undermine the progress that we’ve made and the progress we need to make in terms of climate change.”

Minister Creed does not see this as an issue in terms of rural populations. The focus at BEEF 2018 was for farmers to adopt new technologies, making beef farming more efficient and therefore resilient to market pressure in the future.

The Minister hailed market access to China for beef and live exports of cattle to Libya as positive revenge developments for the beef industry in his speech. He got off lightly, with no questions posed from the floor at the forum.

For more on BEEF 2018 see this week's Irish Farmers Journal.

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