Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair, and I thank the witnesses for their presentation and for their attendance. I have a comment on the overall scene. I welcome the presentation and the good work Teagasc is doing, but we are all familiar with the 21:28: 51 model that is going around when it comes to beef, wherein 21 cent of every euro that is spent across the counter by a person buying Irish beef, 21 cent or 21%, is the farmer's cut, while 28% is the processor's cut and 51% is the retailer's cut. While Teagasc has no influence on that and is probably is not in a position to comment on how we could improve that percentage take for the farmer, Teagasc's good work here is in trying to enhance, increase and improve the farmer's profitability within a very small percentage of the overall take for beef. Even for the most efficient farmer out there, we are still talking about increasing his percentage profitability of a very small percent of the overall income that is coming into the beef sector, the vast majority of which is going to the processors and retailers. Teagasc is on a par with the rest of us here, because none of us can address how to increase the farmer's take, but that is basically the bottom line issue here.

I want to tease out some of the processes and production improvements for farmers, and incorporate into that what has been mentioned already. On the increase in the dairy calf numbers, the increase in the proportion of beef that we either will be eating ourselves, or hopefully exporting, is going to come from the dairy herd.

For a farmer who has been rearing sucklers to rear a dairy calf as a substitute, the internal conflict is that beef is sucklers in the heads of people such as myself and Deputy Martin Kenny the further west one goes. When one looks at the promotion material for Irish beef it shows a picture of a lovely Charolais cow with a fine big calf on a lush, green, grass field. We are portraying that Origin Green, grass-fed image. No matter how efficiently we do it, if we move further towards rearing dairy calves to beef there will be a great deal more inputs and more time spent inside on concrete floors, slats and the like. While we might be getting it right in one way, are we running the risk of damaging our image in the long run? Regardless of how efficient we become at producing the dairy bred calf, in the process of doing that could we lose our grass-fed image, which ultimately could be detrimental to selling the beef?

All the figures and tables in the presentation include the direct payment. We can see from the figures how integral an element it is of farmers' incomes. It will not be Teagasc's call or ours as the final decisions will be made further up the chain, but where would Teagasc like to see the emphasis built into the system in the next CAP payments? Will GLAS payments, hopefully, continue? Will there still be knowledge transfer? They are the two schemes other than the direct payment from which suckler farmers, in particular, can benefit aside from rearing beef. Does Teagasc have an opinion on where it would see the most beneficial payment coming to the beef sector, how it would be most beneficial and how it would improve not just the farmers' lot but the production processes in which they are operating?

Continuing on the beef sector and processing, how does Teagasc envisage the larger kill to produce the same amount of beef given the nature of the beast we will be rearing in the future from the dairy herd? What type of image will that portray? Does Teagasc see any advantages in it when it does its sums for the overall bottom line for a farmer at the end of the year if he moves from suckler production to rearing the dairy calf? He will have to rear many more calves than his cows were rearing to produce the same amount of beef. When one balances the two, will the farmer ultimately be better off?