Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to support our spokesman on agriculture, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív. The fodder crisis has devastated the agriculture industry. At a time when many farmers were planning to expand their dairy, suckler or drystock herds, they found they were hit by a crisis that perhaps did not start three weeks ago but last summer because of the particularly bad weather in that season. Owing to the particularly bad weather, the quality of silage and hay made in the country was poor by comparison with that normally found on farms. This exacerbated the difficulty. There was a long winter and poor quality feed was available for livestock. The condition of livestock was affected because of the poor fodder available. This meant that individual farmers had to feed more concentrates and that the outgoings of farmers, be they dairy farmers involved in liquid milk production or those carrying drystock through the winter, were significantly increased by comparison with previous winters. This has created a very serious financial problem on many farms across the country.

Most agricultural economists believe the industry has potential for development and expansion and that it has the potential to help considerably with the economic recovery of the State. None of us disagrees with this. The industry, by its nature, is capital intensive. It is capital intensive if one is starting with an enterprise, buying land, buying livestock, or developing a farm or farm facilities. In such circumstances, one finds one needs to have a very generous bank manager in one's locality who is prepared to back the individual business plans.

This year we had to import hay from France and fodder from England and other locations. Farmers were particularly glad to have it. We should commend the IFA and the various co-operatives around the country for their initiatives in helping this process.

The reality is that the Minister is faced with a set of circumstances in which individual farmers are in dire financial trouble because of the measures they had to take to acquire fodder. The health of farmers and their families has been affected seriously in many instances because of the stress they have been under throughout an exceptionally long winter. The fertility of breeding stock in the dairy and suckler herds will be seriously affected because of underfeeding and the poor condition of many animals. This will have an impact on the breeding programmes on farms which, in turn, will have implications in the coming year.

I know dairy farmers in County Louth and neighbouring counties in the north east who are getting by because they are grazing silage ground. The Minister knows about agriculture. He knows that a farmer needs to set aside a certain amount of ground on a farm to cut silage to get through the following winter. The domino effect will soon kick in and farmers will not have sufficient silage to get them through next winter. We do not know what type of weather we can expect between now and July, which is the silage and hay-making period. This will add to the difficulty.

A number of things, apart from the financial initiatives, need to be done. A unit to co-ordinate the different agencies and initiatives needs to be set up in the Department. Teagasc has a vital role to play in terms of advising individual farmers about how to tackle the issue of volume and quality of silage in the coming year. What will be the implications under the nitrates directive for individual farmers who have to use more urea or nitrogen to increase the volume of silage? Is the Minister prepared to ask the EU to ensure no penalties are imposed on individual farmers who have had to use additional nitrogen to boost the volume and quantity of their silage this year?

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