Press Release - Careful financial encouragement can maintain presence of important ......

Careful financial encouragement can maintain presence of important livestock farmers in vulnerable LFAs.

Mixed grazing with the right livestock type or breed, and the correct mix of suckler cows and sheep, will protect Northern Ireland’s Less Favoured Areas and deliver the required bio-diversity balance.

This is the core message in the National Beef Association’s response to the Department of Agriculture’s latest consultative examination of future LFA support arrangements.

The NBA says it is impossible to take any other view considering that 70% of the total utilised agricultural area in the Province is classified as LFA and this also contains 70 per cent of all farm businesses as well as 77 per cent of its beef cows and 80 per cent of breeding sheep. 

“These farmers and their stock are essential to the good management of the Less Favoured Areas at present and will continue to be for decades to come,” said the Association’s Northern Ireland chairman, Oisin Murnion, who is a full time hill farmer in the Mournes mountains near Kilkeel.  
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“And if maximum advantage is to be taken from their contribution there needs to be more, on-farm, research on the best way to hit important bio-diversity targets and thereby create sustainable grazing systems which can continue well into the future.”
 
The NBA is equally certain that if farmers are expected to manage these landscapes so they deliver the maximum in terms of public goods then the public must be prepared to pay for the efforts made to achieve these non-commercial aims.

“Market income from the sale of suckled calves and sheep is not enough on its own to keep these farms in business and if these valued landscapes are to be maintained as we know them, and not abandoned to decay, then support to help them continue to be managed in the way the public love must be initiated,” said Mr Murnion.

“It is impossible to deny that recent decoupling combined with poor market returns and eye wateringly high overhead costs are already forcing more LFA farms into decline.”

“The industry has lost 28,000 suckler cows, which represents 10% loss, from the national suckler cow herd over the last four years or since decoupling”.  

“Management priorities have quickly moved from the prevention of overgrazing, to dealing with the consequences of under grazing, and if the Department is not careful outright land abandonment, which is already an unfortunate feature of some of the most outlying areas, will continue to increase.”

“Traditional breeds of cattle and sheep, which are already in the LFA’s need encouragement if they are to continue with the important environmental work demanded of them and the NBA suggests that if the landscape is not to deteriorate further then more assistance must be given to traditional breeds, which are more likely to stick it out in these tough landscapes, so that their crucial presence is financially maintained.”

“We also feel that only ‘active’ farmers should be rewarded for ~managing~ the LFA and this should be done through additional payments for important environmental contributions which should include a mixed grazing supplement and payments for landscape maintenance which will include stone wall renovation, drainage, and roadway access.”

“The public, or the tax payer, will want to see “value for money” and it is therefore important that those land managers who receive a financial allowance must show they have earned it and that they are the ‘right’ people to be receiving it,” Mr Murnion added.

For more information contact:

Oisin Murnion, NBA Northern Ireland chairman.

Tel.  02841 765082/07739 632048.