Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 64: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food if she has carried out an assessment to determine the degree to which farm families can rely on the family farm for their livelihood in the future; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [14235/05]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The CSO 1999-2000 household budget survey indicates that approximately 60% of farm household income comes from off-farm sources. This indicates that many farm families do not solely rely on farm income for their livelihood and off-farm employment has become increasingly common for farm families. Interestingly, much of this off-farm employment is related to agriculture and the agri-food sector.

Analysis conducted for the agri-vision 2015 committee show that of the 136,000 farms in 2002, 38,700 farms were classified as being economically viable with 19,000 of viable farms being part-time farms that is with the farmer and-or spouse having an off-farm income, 37,000 were classed as non-viable farms and 60,000 as transitional.

If the current trends were to continue to 2015 there would be approximately 105,000 farms with approximately 30,000 viable farms of which 20,000 would be part-time, 37,000 non-viable farms and 38,000 transitional farms.

However, when the impact of decoupling, demographics and macro-economic trends are taken into consideration, the composition of the 105,000 farms projected for 2015 alters with a greater number of viable farms projected. The analysis estimated that there would be 40,000 viable farms of which 31,500 would be part-time, 45,000 non-viable farms and 20,000 transitional farms.

These results show that the policy changes, in particular decoupling, would enable larger numbers of farmers to remain viable, but there would also be an increase in the number of part-time farmers. The 2015 committee emphasised that the changes in farm numbers are based on expected reactions of many thousands of farm families to changes in the policy and economic environment, and that they do not, in any sense, constitute a prescription.