The 29% cut in the suckler herd required for agriculture to hit its 2030 climate targets in the recent Teagasc MACC model hit a nerve with many suckler farmers.

Despite the anger it created within the sector, I wonder was it chosen because it provides the path of least resistance?

Looking at the figures since 2012, suckler cow numbers have reduced by an average of roughly 21,000 head/year. If it continues at that rate to 2030, they will have reduced by 17%.

However, if the annual drop in suckler numbers was to replicate the reduction seen in the last 12 months, by 2030, the suckler herd could contract by 5% more than what’s required. For the year between 1 June 2022 and 2023, suckler numbers dropped by 41,091.

There was no reduction scheme in place, but cow prices were on fire and inputs were too – and both of those factors combined would have influenced that drop in numbers.

A drop like that could result in the herd returning to a figure in the region of 600,000, similar to that of 1974, and well in excess of the circa 450,000 suckler cows from 1984.

Economics, age profile, succession issues, along with income and lifestyle expectations, are all factors in the fall-off in numbers, not just policy. Albeit, policy has possibly a higher influence in areas where there are other farming options outside of running suckler cows or ewes.

Historically

Over the last 50 years, suckler cow numbers ebbed and flowed based on policy. Numbers grew artificially through a combination of milk quota, which limited dairy cow numbers, and the introduction of a suckler cow payment during Ray MacSharry’s tenure as EU Commissioner for Agriculture between 1989 and 1993.

Suckler cows appeared in parts of the country where you wouldn’t expect to find them, and numbers peaked at the 1.2m cow mark in 1998.

That high will never be seen again, but despite the doom and gloom, there will still be a significant suckler herd in place in the foreseeable future.

Largely, but not solely, they will be confined to the western half of the country, but suckler farming will be more challenging.

The supports of 20 or 30 years ago can be lamented until the cows come home, but they won’t be back, because policy has moved in a different direction.

If a suckler reduction scheme becomes an option like the dairy one that has been mentioned, it will be interesting to see which one is has the bigger take-up. In terms of numbers, it could be suckler farmers, but in terms of cows, dairy would be in the lead.

You have to remember that as recently as 2020, there were almost as many suckler herds with nine cows or less than there were dairy farms.

If both bovine disciplines wish to have a voluntary exit scheme, then that option should be there for them; but ruling that land from carrying breeding bovines in the future has to be revisited.

Limiting the carrying capacity of the land in terms of organic nitrogen levels might make more sense, but knocking it out of breeding ruminant production would ease land and labour pressure.