Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 25 April 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Fodder Crisis: Discussion with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine

1:20 pm

Photo of Martin FerrisMartin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending the committee and for his presentation. We are out of the blocks late, although that is not a personal criticism. This matter was evident going back to late February when we had a continuous easterly wind for six or seven weeks. In addition, the water table was excessively high as a consequence of a wet summer and wet winter. Marginal land in the west and south west has been particularly badly hit as a result of the adverse weather conditions. We will be so far behind when it comes to harvesting silage later this year that farmers will be a crop down at least. This will continue on into next year and the difficulty will not go away in the short term, given the amount of cattle in the country.

The banks want to lend but to whom will they lend? Will they lend to people who have difficulties as it is, including small farmers? The Minister said co-ops will give interest-free credit, which is welcome, and so they should because they are the main beneficiaries of the producers. It is about time they put something back into it. I welcome the fact that the Minister has got all these people together to alleviate the current situation.

A sizeable number of small and weak farmers will have difficulty in approaching banks for money. Such people may traditionally have had 15 or 20 sucklers, but they have been badly hit. They now find they have spent whatever money they had to buy animal feed.

People in difficulties are being totally exploited by fellow farmers. I know of cases where round bales of silage were sold for €55 to €60 per bale. The same silage was worth approximately €25 to €30 per bale, so that is exploitation yet nothing has been done about it. I do not know how they can live with their consciences having exploited their fellow small farmers who are so vulnerable at the moment.

The IFA and other farming groups are trying to make a connection with such farmers who may be too proud or shy to seek help. They will slip between the cracks unless somebody makes that connection, but we need some form of structure to achieve that.

While the €1 million fund is welcome, I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív that it may be totally inadequate. It is a start, however. I welcome the Minister's statement that more funding will be made available if necessary, which is encouraging.

The only way we will solve this is to work collectively with farming bodies and those with political responsibility to represent the communities we are speaking about. It must be remembered that people are selling off cattle at the moment for prices that are collapsing. A farmer with finished cattle is okay because factory prices are good, but those with yearlings or 18-month-old cattle must sell them for €200 or €300 less than this time last year. The consequences of that will be felt as we move forward.

In addition, we are going to lose the first crop of silage in marginal land. If farmers have any drying they are putting cattle out on what would have been their silage. I know people who have been spreading fertiliser for the last five weeks but it is a total waste because it is gone. That means they need a second fertilisation of their land in order to get growth. There was no growth there for seven weeks and it has only been there for the last couple of days when the wind went around to the south-west with a bit of rain. Before that there was nothing. I am driving around the country every week and can see fields that are burned because there is nothing there. That needs to be taken into account, given what we have been through and the consequences that will arise later this year.

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