Canary in a coalmine” is a saying that has survived the demise of most of the mining on these islands. It refers to the practice where miners would bring the little songbird down into the mineshaft with them.

If the air became dangerously toxic, the canary would suffer, giving an early warning that the miners needed to get out. Nowadays, of course, there are electronic carbon monoxide monitors in every house, so the poor little canaries would be spared.

There are so many canaries indicating the plight of cattle farming they could form a dawn chorus, if they weren’t being starved of oxygen.

Last week alone saw Teagasc’s National Farm Survey show the average suckler farmer only had an income of €7,400. That’s only €140/week. You’d get it from a couple of relief milkings, or a few short shifts in your local shop or pub.

Even more stark is that almost all that income is from direct payments.

As many of the payments are linked to land rather than animal ownership, why bother owning the animals anymore? Stripped of direct payments, the margin from cattle and sheep farming is just €6/ha.

The latest ICBF figures show that farmers are figuring this out. Suckler cow numbers fell by a further 46,543, a drop of almost 6% to 1 June.

There are barely 800,000 cows in the country at this point. And there are both push and pull factors at play. The push factors are demographic – older farmers are reaching the point where they can’t or won’t keep calving, and have no one to come after them. That is particularly true on smaller holdings along the western seaboard.

The pull factor is the high land rental/lease income that can be gained in the south and east. This demand is despite the fact that dairy cow numbers are also falling, down 22,000 after a decade of relentless growth. There’s an even sharper drop in heifer numbers – down almost 50,000 on last year’s June numbers.

Uncertain weather patterns are also affecting farmers’ decisions. If you’re buying stock instead of breeding it, you can match your numbers according to how grass is growing and how grazing conditions are.

You only need winter fodder for the animals you decide to keep. If you’ve little fodder, you can sell them all in the autumn.

Without a decent margin on cattle, farmers are voting with their feet. A higher payment is essential, but processors must play their part.

The marketplace was able to pay an elevated price in 2022. Surely there should be enough in the food chain to pay more in “normal” years.

Miners had tiny oxygen tanks attached to canary cages. Unless the oxygen of better prices is injected into the cattle sector, it will choke.