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

I compliment the Chairman and committee members on the work done on the report. I also compliment the staff and the various organisations that sent in witnesses who gave us their knowledge and expertise on the issue. I also acknowledge the others who made submissions on it.

As has been said, the tillage sector has been under pressure. The Teagasc report for the period 2007 to 2016 shows a reduction in the tillage crops grown in nearly every county. Deputy Penrose will be interested that the figures for Meath and Westmeath increased slightly. They are not all lazy in that part of the country. Despite everything, they are pushing it forward.

The reality is that it is about price. Other speakers referred to the animal feed element. The feedstuffs necessary to keep the dairy and beef sectors going must come from somewhere. Even if we were growing all the grain in Ireland, the reality is that the imports from abroad are considerably cheaper. Given those prices, Irish farmers will not grow that animal feed product. However, the position relating to foodstuffs is completely different.

There is a huge opportunity to produce cereal crops for food and for the whisky and beer sector. We have a distillery in Drumshanbo in County Leitrim which produces gin, whiskey and vodka. Pat Rigney, who runs an excellent business there, tells me that he tries to get as much grain as he can from Ireland, but cannot always do that.

The report shows that a farmer gets 1% of the price of a pint. It costs €7 in the city centre of Dublin but the farmer's share is very small. It costs less than €5 where I come from but farmers face the same reality. A consumer would expect a farmer to get a lot more but it is the same in every sector. Earlier today the EU Commissioner, Mr. Phil Hogan, spoke of the pricing system and the way a product gets to market. Everyone between the primary producer and the consumer seems to be making a lot but the two at the ends are suffering, with the consumer paying a high price and the farmer getting a low price. I acknowledge that work is being done to change this.

The Irish whiskey sector has a huge opportunity across the world. We have made huge advances in Mexico and other countries. The French are the largest consumers of whiskey and have whiskey before and after every meal. If we got just 1% of the Scotch on the French market it would add between 30% to 40% to production in Ireland. I am not an advocate for alcohol as it has many dangers but there is an opportunity for a product that has a story to it. I spoke to somebody who provides food to luxury hotels in the Far East, who told me they cannot get enough of food that has a story, whether it is cheese, meat or anything else. They want to put on a menu that a piece of lamb came from such a place in Ireland and was raised on a mountain with pure feed. We produce a lot of food for export in Ireland but we are tiny in proportion to the food consumed throughout the world. We need to put ourselves in a place where we get a premium price for our product, which means we have to do it not just better than everywhere else, but purer than everywhere else.

An opportunity exists for the tillage sector, which is a vital part of our beef and dairy sectors, as well as beer and whiskey. What is missing is a bit of joined-up thinking. The industry has to come on board but the people who produce the final product have to recognise that the farmer needs to be knitted into the picture, which means they must be given not just a fair price but an excellent price to enable them to expand. In Leitrim and north Roscommon, they used to say that the money that bought land was never made on land. People went away, worked hard and then came home and bought a farm, almost when they were due to retire. We should have an agricultural industry which does not just provide a living for people. It should sustain the next generation and there is now an opportunity to do that, with the tillage sector central to this. Deputy Penrose mentioned a quality assurance scheme and this needs to be looked at. If we put Origin Green on a bottle of whiskey or anything we produce it should mean all the ingredients are produced in Ireland. It should also mean that the farmer who contributes to those ingredients gets an excellent price and is well looked after.

The report is an excellent document and goes into many of these issues. It sets out a roadmap for the way forward but we need to be even more imaginative. The Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Andrew Doyle, spoke of the horticulture sector. I grew mushrooms for many years in the mid-1980s, when small farmers were encouraged to have an alternative farm enterprise, with the assistance of grant aid and other things. It kept farms going but, with economies of scale, in order for people to make money they had to expand from one mushroom field to two and then, after a few years, to ten, 15 or 20 and not everyone could do that. A few big players got very big and the rest disappeared. Where there is pressure to make money in this scenario, Government has to become a leveller by supporting the small people to stay small. I heard what Deputy Mattie McGrath had to say and, while it is amusing to think of the hard work there was on a farm, in the shape of thinning and other things, we do not want to go back to those days. Nevertheless, mass efficiency will eventually mean we have very few people working and a lot of stuff produced but without the quality. We need to have balance and to rethink where we are going.

There is a piece in the back of the report on alternative and new ideas for the horticulture sector, involving technology and other things and we need to look at opportunities such as them. The important thing is that the sector needs to stay small scale, though I do not mean micro level. It needs to be manageable and able to sustain a family farm. If we do that with horticulture there will be opportunities for us.

This report is an excellent document but it will have to be bought into by several industries, particularly the food and drink industries, as well as the Minister and Government who have a big role to play. To have a vibrant tillage industry, the people who grow the grains have to know they will get a very good price consistently into the future. There are great opportunities if everyone works together because when communities come together, they can do something different. Everyone in the world recognises that Ireland is a country from where clean and high-quality food and drink comes and we need to use that to our advantage. We must ensure that those in a strong position, such as those in the processing industry, do not abuse their strength. The job of Government is to ensure that does not happen. I commend the report and thank the committee and everyone who put so much work into it.

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