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

I thank Dr. O'Mara for his presentation. It was quite informative. I have a couple of questions. Regarding the suckler sector, I come from a part of the country where the farmers are nearly all small suckler farmers with an average of ten to 15 cows. The key thing is that the cow must be kept all year round, and the only thing the cow produces is the calf. This is one of the problems. I am interested in the better beef challenge. What type of land is involved, and where is the programme being run? Is it primarily being run in the west or in the midlands? Does it aim to get these calves up to a stage at which they are beyond weanlings and sold on to finishers or to finish them off?

Regarding the other sector Dr. O'Mara talked about, the best practice on dairy to beef, some farmers around us are now starting to take in the dairy calves and rear them, usually on contract. As I said, the suckler farmer's biggest cost is trying to keep the cow all year round. If the farmer has 15 cows and only two of them calve, he or she has a big cost keeping that in place. Is it possible to see a future situation in which an alternative model to this kind of structure is developed? The model we have at present is that the suckler cow is kept on the more marginal, more difficult land that may be suitable for dairying, tillage or other things and a very good-quality weanling calf is produced and then sold on to be finished somewhere else. Is there a feasible alternative model to this, not a trial, that can work on that type of land and produce a higher income per hectare? What trials have already been done on this to prove the concept?

The big issue here, of course, is the price farmers can get returned. The prices returned from the factories at present are not meeting the needs of any sector of this. The prices are just not able to provide the level of income required for that level of income to be fed back down the line to the suckler farmer from the beef producer to make either sector viable, the finisher or the suckler. One of the suggestions that has been made is that more emphasis needs to be placed on providing producer groups whereby groups of farmers coming together can get better prices, produce the finished animal and sell it at a higher price. We have had various groups before the committee talking about this and the way in which they would do it. There are questions marks surrounding this, but how much work has been done on this concept? Are we near or could we come to a situation in which we could see farmers on poorer land in the west of Ireland being able to finish their cattle? Is there any model that could be developed in this regard, whereby farmers could finish cattle on such land and perhaps take quality beef calves from the dairy herd, finish them and make a better profit on them than that they are making at present, whereby they must keep suckler cows to produce the calves?