Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I come from Leitrim and we have quite a number of organic farmers. Many of them have done very well, but I am very aware that there are people who have done it for a few years, found it difficult, and moved out of it again. It seems that the supports which have been put around organic farming are not working to make it sustainable in the long term. That is the issue that we have to try and get to the core of.

There seems to be a market for the product in spite of the gazumping of it from both ends. At one end the producer is finding it difficult to survive as the supports have not been good enough, and at the other end the housewife who buys it, the consumer, is really being done for it. There is something wrong there. It is something that should be looked at, and I think it is particularly evident in the organic sector. It is happening in a lot of sectors of farming, as we have spoken about, but it is particularly evident in the organic sector.

A couple of the issues that were mentioned with regard to the recommendations from the previous committee are immediately obvious to me. The front-loading of payments for the first 20 hectares can be addressed without an awful lot of cost and it would make a big difference. The certification bodies seem to be acting as a block and seem to be one of the problems. They should not be, and there is no reason for that. Again, that is something which will cost nothing, but is something that we should be able to deal with either through the Department or through the Minister. There should be some way to change the rules to make it easy and to remove that block.

The appeals process and the independence of the Department in the process were mentioned as applying across the board and not just to organics. I think every farmer would have that particular gripe. They feel that if the Department has found them wrong and there is an appeal, the Department personnel are not going to let themselves down and the farmers will be found wrong again. That is something that many farmers find difficult. It is particularly the case for organic farmers.

Access to entitlements and reserve are big issues for new entrants to every sector of farming. The fact that there is no national reserve for them at the moment is a big issue, but especially in the organic sector. I have come across a number of younger farmers who want to go organic and who are very interested and enthusiastic about it. They are on marginal land. It would suit them and work for them from the point of view of being able to get a better price for their produce. To go intensive is going to be difficult because they do not have the land to intensify and it is not good enough. The issue is that when they study it, and this goes back to the point that was made at the beginning, it just does not work. The level of support is not there. We keep coming back to this issue which Deputy Cahill among others mentioned, that most consumers say that organic is a lovely idea but they cannot afford it. It is seen as something that is for people in Dublin 4 who want to go green and who can afford to buy this expensive stuff, but for ordinary housewives and ordinary people it is just out of their price range. That should not be the case.

If the issues of front-loading and certification were addressed and something done about the gazumping of the market, it would open up the sector and more people would be able to get into organic farming. One of the things that is stopping the sector from growing is the fact that the product is so expensive for the end consumer. We should definitely be looking in that direction. I still think it is not for every farmer, but it certainly is an option for many farmers on the more marginal land, for example, in the west.

It would be interesting to find out more about the two levels of certification. In Austria they have two levels of certification, and the example of the calf was given, that provided that it has organic feed for three months after it is a month old it can be certified organic when it reaches four months. The code we use here is so strict, it is something we could look at as well. We could work with the farmers to come up with recommendations and put pressure on to try to get the original recommendations implemented, but there are other things that should be looked at as well.