Pulling straw measure mid-stream puts all schemes ‘on slippery slope’

Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue got the message “hot and heavy” from farming organisations that the Straw Incorporation Measure must stay for 2024.

On Wednesday, Minister McConalogue stated that he intends on scrapping the scheme for this year to bolster straw supplies in a statement delivered without consultation with farm groups.

The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) and Irish Grain Growers’ Group (IGGG) held a joint meeting with the Minister on Thursday ahead of the annual Energy and Farm Diversification Show in Gurteen Agricultural College.

Both farming organisations warned that by dropping a scheme already in place when farmers have completed its actions sets a dangerous precedent for other farm schemes to be pulled and are seeking another meeting with Minister McConlaogue on Thursday.

No sign of shift

“We didn’t get any feeling off him that he is going to shift anything. He has offered another meeting next week, but that is too late,” IFA grain chair Kieran McEvoy told the Irish Farmers Journal after the meeting.

“Combines have been rolling for over eight or nine days. I don’t think the Minister understands the gravity of the situation.

“Lads have made decisions last spring and here he is now in the middle of the harvest pulling the scheme. It is unprecedented to pull a scheme.

“Farmers are so angry and disillusioned coming out of the worst tillage year ever and the worst planting year ever. Going into harvest, yesterday was the final insult to tillage farmers.

“This has to be reversed. The scheme has to run as it was and whatever it takes, we are prepared to do it.”

Both organisations claim that the Minister remains unaware of the impact that dropping the payment would have on tillage incomes, especially for those who have had to invest in machinery to complete the work needed to receive the payment.

They have also highlighted that the scheme does not interfere with the straw or fodder market, as farmers can opt out of the scheme at any time during the year and would be prepared to do so if appropriate straw prices were offered by buyers.

Precedent set

IGGG chair Bobby Miller saw the issue as “black and white” for tillage farmers, as the only acceptable route Minister McConalogue could use to save face is by going back on Wednesday’s statement.

However, Miller maintains that the Minister “hasn’t appreciated or understood” the significance of scrapping the straw scheme.

“If the Minister is prepared to do this for the Straw Incorporation Measure, where does it leave him with the other farm sectors and their schemes as well?

“The precedence of this can't be lost on the livestock sector and every other sector. This is the first time a Minister has went about pulling a scheme mid-stream and it’s a warning to other sectors.”

Move could increase straw prices

Andrew Revington was among the angered tillage farmers who gathered to meet Minister McConalogue on his arrival to Gurteen.

The income loss that would follow a scrapping of the straw payment could see farmers increasing the costs of the straw they had been planning on selling to make up for the income shortfall, Revington warned.

“I have got 80ac of gluten-free oats sown on the basis that some of the money was going to come from the straw incorporation scheme,” he commented to the Irish Farmers Journal.

“That straw is very difficult to dry out and bale it, it is just too green and the logical thing to do is to chop it.

“I am going to actually chop that anyway, but I am now out of money. I would feel that to compensate me, I would actually have to charge more for the bales I am going sell if I am not going to get this money from the Department of Agriculture.”