Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is outlining plans for the area under tillage but there are so many contradictions in the policy.

The Minister highlighted that tillage farmers are finding it hard to rent land. There is no plan to address that matter, other than to talk to them about it. This has been an issue for a while now, in particular for farmers who might be facing a change in derogation and who are renting land in other places. Tillage farmers simply cannot compete with the price dairy farmers can make in that way. As a result, the policies continue to drive dairy farmers to increase the amount of nitrates they are using and they are renting land at extortionate prices to do that, which is worthwhile, and then preventing tillage farmers from being able to rent more land. From what the Minister says, there does not seem to be any plan to address that.

The Minister also mentioned the tillage incentive scheme, which did lead to an increase in the area of land under tillage, but that was mainly of advantage to non-tillage farmers. That was especially demoralising, as farmers who were already invested in tillage could not benefit from the scheme. We all know that there is not enough joined-up thinking for the tillage sector. It is completely undervalued. It is carbon-neutral. We are importing food and feed from all over the world and there is no real or meaningful effort to encourage more people to go into tillage in Ireland. Will the Minister outline what he is going to do about tillage farmers being driven out in view of the prices they must pay to rent land? Because of the situation in dairy, it is financially worthwhile for dairy farmers to rent land and potentially not even use it, in order that they can apply more nitrates.

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