Christmas 2021 Stocking Fillers

CSO 2020 Census of Agriculture – some things change, some don’t.

The preliminary results for the CSO 2020 Census of Agriculture, first update since 2010, were published earlier this month.

Ten years is a relatively long time, so what are the most important changes?

Overall numbers of farmers have fallen by 3.2% in the last decade, to 135,037.

Land utilisation has not changed very much in percentage terms. Rough grazing reduced over the last three decades, but gained 3.3% in 2020 relative to 2010. Grassland which was less than 80% of AAU between 1991 and 2000 has risen above 80% since, but dropped very slightly to 82.1% in 2020 relative to 2010. The dominance of grass in the Irish Agricultural area both explains and reflects the natural advantage and historical tradition of pastoralism.

The flipside is that only a small proportion of Ireland’s AAU is under crops. The area under cereals fell 3% in the last decade to 265,592 ha. Other crops, fruit, and horticulture have seen their area increased by 15.2% between 2010 and 2020. Delivering on the national and EU policy to increase home produced protein crops and grains for human consumption and feed production will require improving the economic viability of those markets.

Cattle numbers increased 10.7% from 6.6m in 2010 to 7.3m in 2020, largely due to the expansion of the dairy herd. But poultry left all in the shade, with bird numbers rising 50.8% to 16.5m.

The average farm size for 2020 across the country, at 33.4 ha, is up 2.1% on 2010. The regional trend remains unchanged in 2020: largest farms are found in the South East, at 43.9 ha, and Mid-East and Dublin, at 43 ha. Smallest farms are found in the West, with an average size of 18.8 ha.

It is clear that even relatively large Irish farms remain at the family scale norm. This shows just how wide of the mark any commentators are who refer to “factory farming” in relation to Irish agriculture.

Women accounted for 12.4% of farm holders in 2010 and have progressed a meagre 1% to 13.4% in the decade. The draft CAP National Strategic Plan provides for higher rates of investment grant aids for women farmers. This won’t take effect until 2023, however, so it should help nudge things along… slowly.

The farming population has continued to age. In 1991, 33.1% of farm holders were under the age of 45. In 2020, this group accounted only for 20.8% of all farm holders. While the long-term trend for the under 35 had been negative, there was a small increase in the last decade, from 6.2% to 6.9%.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the over 65 now account for nearly 33% of farmers, as against 26% a decade ago, and 20% 30 years ago.

The many economic, social and environmental challenges in the sector, and the toxic debate which sometimes surrounds it, is making it difficult to attract young women and men. Recruiting well educated young people is crucial to improve the uptake of the changed farming practices and technologies required to improve our food production sustainability. Generational renewal and gender balance as part of Ireland’s agri-food policies, is just as relevant to our social as it is to our environmental sustainability.

How will farmers tap into carbon farming?

The EU Commission has, in the Green Deal’s Farm to Fork Strategy, committed to providing incentives for carbon farming, and earlier this month adopted a Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, which commits to short to medium term actions aiming to:

promote carbon farming practices under the CAP and other EU programmes such as LIFE and Horizon Europe, in particular under the Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe”, and under public national financing;
drive the standardisation of monitoring, reporting and verification methodologies to provide a clear and reliable framework for carbon farming;
provide improved knowledge, data management and tailored advisory services to land managers.

Also earlier this month, a study commissioned by the ENVI Committee of the European Parliament found carbon farming offers significant climate mitigation potential, and stands to also deliver on biodiversity objectives. However, it also warns of scientific uncertainty around the scale of that potential, the need for accurate measuring, monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and the danger of potential impermanence of carbon action by land managers.

MRV is needed to assess carbon sequestration and mitigation accurately, to ensure it is really delivered, and then rewarded fairly. The EU Commission’s Communication referenced above sets out to drive a standardised MRV approach. It is an expensive and complex process, and only in its infancy in Ireland through the newly established Sign Post programme, and other programmes such as Carbury’s Zero Carbon farm at Shinagh, or the Devenish project at Dowth.

The ENVI Committee study also identifies the risk of all or part of the mitigation good being undone, intentionally or otherwise, resulting in the release back into the atmosphere of previously sequestered carbon. The study warns that carbon farming mitigation must be permanent – which will undoubtedly have implications for land management by farmers.

Among other issues highlighted in the study is the need for additionality. The principle here is that climate action must be about net carbon removal. The study warns against using carbon farming to offset carbon mitigation in other sectors. Here again, the risk of non-additionality is raised: carbon farming mitigation must be additional and must not reduce climate ambition in other sectors.

In other words, the prospect of farmers getting paid for growing trees by some other sector that provides the finance to offset their own carbon emissions will just not cut the mustard.

The ENVI Committee study expects CAP to do a lot of heavy lifting in providing, through the national Strategic Plans, for funding to support carbon farming. The draft CAP Strategic Plan, published by the Department of Agriculture some weeks back, while providing for various schemes which will have an impact on climate mitigation, does not provide for carbon farming. In any case, it is debatable whether it should be funded from CAP funds, which will already be subjected to significant redistribution and will require farmers to engage with additional environmental action to secure their full basic payment.

For farmers, crucial questions have yet to be answered: Bearing in mind the urgency of climate action, how soon will a credible, recognised carbon farming scheme be accessible? How will it be funded if other sectors cannot use it for mitigation? Will it recognise existing farm sequestration, despite the principle of additionality? What implications will it have for future land management for farmers if permanence of measures is to be secured?

Brexit – What next?

The ESRI have this week published a study trying to assess the initial impact of Brexit on trade between Great Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland. This exercise is not limited to trade in food products, but the findings appear to be reflected in all sectors.

In light of the importance in the Brexit negotiations of the NI Protocol, which has yet to be fully resolved, the ESRI treated trade between Ireland and GB and Ireland and NI, separately. It arrives at the conclusion that Irish imports from and exports to GB have fallen sharply following Brexit, but that the reduction in exports is not “statistically significant”. This, they explain by the fact that customs checks have not yet been fully implemented by the UK (see below). This means the ESRI expect it may take longer for the full effect of Brexit to materialise. They also stress that the Protocol has worked to the advantage of Northern Ireland’s trade: the share of Irish imports from the UK originating in NI have gone from 6% in 2015 to 40% in 2021. However, ESRI adds that it is not yet possible to assess whether increased trade between Ireland and NI is the result of displaced trade between NI and GB, because this is not tracked as international trade. This reconciliation could be done at a later stage using annual British statistics.

So, what’s next on Brexit? This time last year, we were fearing a possible no-deal Brexit. Then, on Christmas eve, the Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TAC) effectively removed the worst of the cliff-face effect Irish food exporters feared.

However, the UK Government seemed to try for most of the year to renegotiate aspects of the TAC, and most of all, the Protocol previously agreed and signed to deal with Northern Ireland.

Most of the controls the UK was to implement on imports during the year or from 1 January next are not yet in place. In fact, the UK has postponed most of the measures by several months, so no matter how much more difficult exporting to the UK has been for Irish food producers, it will get worse in 2022.

The following is the timeline for implementation of import controls on foods from the EU: from 1 January 2022, as was planned in the TAC, full customs declarations and controls on imports to the UK will apply. From the same date, postponed from October last, EU exporters will have to give prenotification for SPS checks on agri-food products. From 1 July, also postponed from last October, safety and security declarations will have to be made on imports. Also from that date, export health certs and physical checks on animal and plant products and by-products, as well as meat and meat products will start, which were initially planned for October 2021. Export health certs and physical checks on dairy products are postponed from January to 1 September, and to the 1 November 2022 for all other foods and fish products.

For Ireland, however, the UK unilaterally decided to temporarily postpone all those controls on imports of foods originating from the Republic to allow for the negotiations on the Northern Irish Protocol to conclude.The challenges of trade between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic – where the checks take place, and whether that happens between NI and GB – are politically tricky for all three and for the EU at several levels, which have been well documented and debated in the last couple of years.

Negotiations between the UK and the EU on the NI Protocol have been paused until 14th January. The EU unilaterally announced a deal allowing for NI to continue to have unimpeded access to medicines coming from GB. The UK, meanwhile, has agreed to the European Court of Justice continuing, at least for a time, to adjudicate on the Protocol. This has hopefully improved the outlook for an agreement on the Protocol, which may also be furthered by the resignation of the notoriously inflexible Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost. Whether his successor Foreign Secretary Liz Truss can build on this to bring the negotiations to a satisfactory outcome in early 2022 remains to be seen.

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