Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on this important work. I used to teach maths and physics but I also taught civil, social and political education. When I was teaching fair trade, I would draw a banana on the board and slice it up with the smallest slice going to the grower of the bananas. You could do that now with a steak or litre of milk. This Bill may help to deal with that. For far too long, the people who do the most work get the least money out of it. I welcome the Bill in general. The introduction of the regulator should ensure that primary producers of food – farmers, growers, fishers and small producers – are dealt with fairly through the food supply chain and hopefully it will advocate for them too. It would be brilliant to ensure compliance with unfair trading laws, which we know to be a huge issue. What will happen around the monopoly on offal and processing? That is something that we will have to deal with if we want better payments to and fairer treatment for producers, to the dairy, the beef and the growers, because there seems to be a monopoly around charges for dealing with offal and processing beef as more and more local butchers close and producers of beef are obliged to go to the big companies. So must the milk producers. They are caught because they have to take whatever price they are given. I hope this will deal with that.

I also hope the regulator will take a more nuanced approach to pricing. Take big farmers, say in Meath, with 1,000 head of cattle and a small farmer in west Clare with 30 cattle. They are getting the same price for the meat but there is no debate on the difference in quality. We need to look at the quality of the product and valuing it. There is a huge difference between grass fed, free range, outside happy-as-Larry cattle as opposed to 24-hours, intensive farmed, cattle pumped with lots of chemicals. I hope the regulator will look at pricing in a more nuanced way because we have to look at the small-farm families doing their best with good animal husbandry, really good quality meat and milk and we have to differentiate between the two.

We must do more to help support smaller producers. We have a great lad at home, John Vaughan, who launched Moo'ghna Milk. He is bringing milk to three villages and you can fill up your bottle yourself. It is good for many reasons. The amount of paperwork he had to go through nearly broke him but he would not give in. It is amazing to see how insane the scrutiny of small producers can be by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine inspectors. It is not the same level for the big ones. The cost can be so exorbitant for small producers that they just give up. That is something that we need to look at. To be fair, John Vaughan did get good support from the Government in other ways but it went on a very long time. My sister has the family farm. She makes goats cheese and from working there and looking at it, I know how the intense costs can lead to small producers needing huge loans. John Vaughan is providing six jobs and my sister provides 12 jobs on a small family farm. You would not see that many employees on a big intensive dairy where you have a lot of machines and maybe one guy making a lot of money. There is something valuable about the amount of jobs provided when you value small producers.

The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, report showed that we need to do much more to support farmers in their challenges around nitrates. There is no doubt but that it is an issue. Not every farmer is to blame but some are. We do not see proper enforcement but we also need to support farmers more so that they are not forced because of poor pricing to intensify their farming and, as a result, have too many nitrates.

The war in Ukraine showed how farmers had become so reliant on inputs from abroad that they were in serious trouble when they looked to get nitrates. They have become dependent on global inputs and we should not do that. We should be much more sustainable and self-reliant. If it not the Ukraine war, then it is climate emergency. We will see droughts in other countries and there will be huge issues where Irish farmers are dependent on imports to be able to run their farms. It is not sustainable in the long term at all and it is coming down the track much sooner than we think.

I want to acknowledge the good work of the Minister and his team on this. It was badly needed for a long time. It was in the programme for Government and we are delivering on the promises made in it. The Green Party has always believed that sustainable farming methods that focus on smaller-scale quality-based production will provide greater financial security to those in the agriculture sector and will safeguard the use of farming land, marine environments and family farms. People talk about farmers versus Greens and so on but there is a difference between a 30 head of cattle farm and 1,000 cattle in a shed. We have to start having a more nuanced debate about farming and pricing for farmers. There is such a big difference.

We have a great farmers' market in Ennis with beef producers, pork producers and food growers. They are so busy producing and going to market they have no time for public relations. I would love to see the Department acknowledging the importance of farmers' markets that enable the small producers to bring their products to consumers directly. I know this Bill deals with business-to-business but a small amount of supports could make a huge difference to farmers' markets which do not have time to do marketing. They can get supports from local authorities but that is not working out very well. Let us show small producers that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine appreciates them and the quality of their produce. The fact that they have to stand around a market all day also takes their time off on the land where they need to be growing and minding their animals. It would be great to see something in the budget to support farmers' markets. I wish the Minister the best of luck with this Bill.