Comments on: Latest CSO figures underline vulnerability of Irish agriculture

By: The Effect Of Water Pollution On Humans

The Effect Of Water Pollution On Humans — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:23:21 +0000

I found your blog via Google while searching for the effect of water pollution on humans, thank you for posting Latest CSO figures underline vulnerability of Irish agriculture!

By: Danny Haskins

Danny Haskins — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:13:04 +0000

As a farmer my experience of the problems facing dairy farming are due to our commodity led production. We are producing vast amounts of skim milk powder, butter etc and not achieving value added products. Because of this we are competing on the world markets with New Zealand (low cost large scale production in a country with a low standard of living) USA (large scale industrial production mitigating against high feed costs).
Because of this milk price to farmers this year will be low 20’s cent a litre- below cost of production. If it stays like that for 12 months farmers will be joining the list of bankruptcies too.
All state agencies in farming are encouraging a seasonal low cost production method and not supporting a value added. The only Irish dairy brand know internationally is Kerrygold- butter!
I’m taking a risk and going to turn my million litres of milk into artisan cheese myself.

By: Brendan Walsh

Brendan Walsh — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:14:56 +0000

This is a very helpful account of what’s going on in the agricultural sector, Alan.
I have been struck by how stable the numbers recorded as employed in agriculture (on the ILO basis in the QNHS) have been in recent years - about 120,000 since 2004. So even during the runaway construction boom there was little net outflow from the sector. With the collapse of employment in construction, we might now expect employment in agriculture to increase. So there may be more people adding “precisely nothing to GNP” in this sector in the years ahead!