A central plank of the CAP is a fair return for farmers. While nobody expected farm incomes to be maintained at 2022 levels, I was taken aback at last week’s Teagasc presentation to see that every single land use farm enterprise returned a farm income in 2023 lower than in any year since 2020.

While the headlines concentrated on the declines in 2023 compared with 2022 especially the 69% and 71% reductions in dairy and tillage incomes, there were also reductions in cattle rearing and finishing and sheep, as well as dairying and tillage when 2023 is compared with 2020 and 2021.

This was on the raw income analysis. As the Teagasc economists disarmingly put it, “costs stayed stubbornly high“. In other words, there was no regulatory oversight of costs of which fertiliser is a prime example and everyone gained from a concerted effort to keep prices as high as possible during the main spreading season.

At this stage, Teagasc categorise just 28% of Irish farms as viable.

Side-by-side with the prices and incomes concerns are the regulatory changes that have caused such demonstrations and political upheavals across Europe.

While the KPMG report commissioned by the Irish Farmers Journal and released at the Tullamore Farm Open Day last week quantified the costs and income loss from existing and potential regulatory changes, the Teagasc Open Day at Johnstown Castle on resilient and sustainable farming systems identified the huge range of factors now weighing on farmers as we try to come to grips with a constantly changing set of demands and environmental targets.

One of the targets that has radically shifted is due to a recalculation of emissions that are being attributed to drained peatland and what has to be done about them. New measurements have reduced the annual emissions from an estimated nine million tonnes/year to three million tonnes / year. At a minimum, this will need less land to be rewetted.

In some cases we find that the benefits of modern science are actually being denied so that new targets are made more difficult to achieve. Dermot Forristal of Teagasc Oak Park put his finger on one of them when he made the point that pressure on soils can be eased by earlier winter sowing but weeds and barley yellow dwarf after virus (BYDV) can be extra risks, yet we have legislated that seed dressings to control BYDV should not be available.

Society cannot have it both ways. As well paid pilots scoop a guaranteed 17% pay rise, it is clearly time to revisit the volatile farm income/pricing model.