Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor Boyle for a comprehensive presentation. I have a number of questions. First, with regard to the single farm payment, we are going into another review of the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. Has any analysis been done of, say, the Irish experience with a 10% or 15% reduction in premia and the impact this would have on the future of the sector? We had a number of groups in here last week and they were extremely pessimistic about where the whole industry is going. We talked about niche markets, Jameson and all the different craft beers that we are now producing, but the tonnage that is needed for that is probably very low in the overall context. How much would that industry need in terms of market share to have a significant impact on the tonnage we are producing? Flahavan's are paying a serious premium price for oats. What kind of tonnage can that market absorb?

While it might not be fair to ask Teagasc about this, I have a question about barley. When I was young, to have a malting contract was a prized possession but the value of that seems to have gone out the window, as it were. To link malting barley with feed barley as regards price seems a contradiction in terms because they are going to different markets. Surely the price mechanism for calculating what malting barley is worth should not have any synchronisation with feed barley.

Biomass is increasingly becoming a topic for us. We have our targets to meet by 2021 and if we do not meet them, we are going to suffer significant penalties.

We have not even started to go the way we should with regard to biomass. Our stocking rate is probably at 50% of capacity in terms of the utilisation or our land. It is 80 kg per hectare, and with a derogation it is 170 kg. If we devoted 20% of our land to the production of biomass, how much could it do for the whole cereal and tillage sector? We could grow sugar beet or break crops such as elephant grass, or miscanthus, but it would be very hard to get a conventional tillage farmer to buy into them. Anyone who did so in the past couple of years was badly bitten but conventional tillage crops can have a role to play in meeting our climate change targets. There was a good conference in Gurteen recently but we need a far greater emphasis on the potential of biomass.

My next question is on the potential for us to produce GM-free dairy products for the market place. I have worries over our ability to go down that route and maintain a competitive production base with other countries but can we produce enough protein to be independent? If we go the GM-free route, will be able to produce enough feed for our dairy and beef industry? Organics give a premium but when a market gets saturated that premium goes out the window. We would be competing with countries that were not on the same thoroughfare so would we be able to keep our competitive advantage? At the moment the price is in a relatively good place but slumps will come. Consumers are starting to push us down the GM-free route but price is the common denominator and I wonder if we might leave ourselves in a very vulnerable position in terms of our cost base.

I welcome the presentation. This industry is at a serious crossroads and what has worked in the past is not going to work in the future. When the report comes out I would love to hear grain men or tillage men say they can see light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps a five-year or ten-year roadmap to a decent market for our products at a reasonable price. The graph of world markets shown in the presentation does not look like it can give a lifeline to our tillage sector.