The exodus from sucklers in NI has continued, with a further 335 farms leaving the sector in the last year, the latest data published by DAERA confirms.

In the last 10 years, over 1,500 farms have stopped keeping sucklers, leaving 13,475 farms with beef cows at the last DAERA census in June 2024. Despite the big reduction, over half of all farms in NI still have suckler cows.

Average herd size has remained fairly constant at around 17 cows, which leaves the total suckler herd at 226,000 head, down 4% on the previous year and 8.4% lower than in June 2022. The 2024 figure is the lowest recorded in NI for 37 years and a far cry from the late 1990s, when numbers peaked at nearly 345,000 head.

Payment

Between 2019 and 2022, suckler numbers in NI had remained relatively stable at around 245,000 head, which may have been in response to the promise of a suckler cow payment from DAERA. However, that scheme has been slow to emerge and is now delayed to 1 April 2025. In addition, payment rates in the scheme are to be lower than first thought, with the latest projections pointing to a rate of around £100 per head.

The Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) has also called for the scheme to be held back until January 2026, to avoid a situation where cows calving in the first three months of the year will have to meet different eligibility requirements to those from April onwards. It would mean that the first payments under the scheme would not be made until March 2027.

Record dairy

The contraction in the NI suckler herd is in contrast to dairy cow numbers, which hit a new record high of 325,325 in June 2024, up 2% on the previous year.

That increase is not simply driven by suckler farmers switching to dairy, with the number of dairy farms actually slowly trending down by an average of around 30 farmers per year in the last 10 years. The average dairy herd has increased from 86 cows in 2014 to 104 cows, kept on 3,133 dairy farms in June 2024.

Overall, total cattle numbers in NI are at 1.67m head – that figure has remained remarkably stable over the last 40 years.

Sheep and crops

Across the other main sectors it is a mixed picture. Total ewe numbers in June 2024 were down 4% on the previous year to stand at 930,447, which is the lowest breeding ewe flock since 2014. The average flock is now 96 ewes kept on 9,719 farms.

The total cereal area is also down, dropping 5% to 30,342ha, the lowest it has been since 2020. However, other field crops are up slightly from 13,785ha to 14,195ha, with this increase mainly thought to be due to an expansion in the area of forage maize.

Intensive sector

The total number of breeding pigs in June 2024 was virtually unchanged from the previous year, at 56,220, leaving numbers slightly behind the totals of over 58,000 head from 2021 and 2022.

However, there continues to be significant flux in the poultry sector, driven by producers switching from broilers to laying hens. The number of hens in their first laying cycle was up 4% in June 2024 to hit 6.44m, which is the highest ever-recorded in NI.

In the last year, broiler numbers are down 14% to 13.38m, although that is still ahead of the 11.9m from 2022.