Stormy clouds ahead for Limerick farmers after the sun shone on them in 2021
HAPPY New Year to all Farm Leader readers and hopefully it will be a happy one as Christmas is over and 2022 awaits.
Apart from emergency services farmers are one of the few professions who work on Christmas Day Cattle need to be fed and checked and liquid milk producers had to turn on the machine like every other morning.
I was never a fan myself. The life of a reporter is an easier one. Let’s hope as people tucked into their Christmas dinner or consumed their third Baileys they realised that it all didn’t magically appear on supermarket shelves or butchers’ stalls.
Reflecting on the past year (Covid apart) made me think of Van Morrison's lyrics. “When it's not always raining there'll be days like this.”
The weather plays such a huge part on farmers' livelihoods and this year the Gods were kind. Grass was getting very tight after the heatwave in July but then lovely, soft, August rain arrived.
Dry weather returned and even now ground is in decent shape for the time of year. Driving through the county you will see cattle being happily outwintered. After animals were late going into sheds and hopefully out early, silage contractors could have a quiet summer! There will be no fodder shortage this winter.
The drought of 2018 hasn’t been forgotten and plenty of bales and pit silage leftover will be a comforting sight. 2018 will also be remembered for the Limerick hurlers ending the All-Ireland drought.
Another reason I quoted Van Morrison's song was Limerick's back-to-back All-Ireland wins. Silage bales were used as a canvass to support the hurlers including the inimitable Roger Mulqueen and his handiwork in Bruff.
Brenda Lundon in Cappamore had a new message for every day for the week in the run up to the final. Aside from the bales there were Limerick flags and bunting hung on practically every farm entrance. Many still are.
Another reason for 2021 being a good year was the strong milk and sheep price and badly needed lift in beef. The exception is pig prices have fallen in 2021.
But while some would have you believe farming is flowing with milk and honey the Teagasc National Farm Survey released in July showed the national average farm income increased from €23,600 in 2019 to €25,663 in 2020.
The average income of suckler farmers, for instance, remains at just over €9,000 while average annual earnings per employee across the entire economy is closer to €40,000. And that's for a 39 hour week. Many farmers would have worked those hours by Wednesday evening.
It is never plain sailing in agriculture. The rise in input prices is gobbling up bigger cheques. The Teagasc Outlook 2022 - Economic Prospects for Agriculture, released in December, said the “unprecedented escalation in fertiliser prices raises questions about the level of fertiliser usage, fertiliser expenditure, farm output and farm profitability in 2022”.
Teagasc predicts a 19% drop in average farm income in 2022 compared to 2021 due mainly to the increase in the cost of fertiliser, diesel and feed. If it is a bad year weather wise then things can change very fast. Looking to the future there are the sectoral targets under the Climate Act and the Nitrates Action Programme.
But all any of us can do is “control the controllables” as the cliché goes. And number one is safety. There were a number of seats empty at the dinner table on December 25 after tragic accidents this year on farms. The price of milk or beef - good or bad - isn't much use when you are gone to your God.
Instead of worrying about the future let’s enjoy the present, Covid aside. Like many I watched a repeat of the All-Ireland final on Christmas day.
Great years like 2021 need to be stored up in the memory bank as safely as Celtic Crosses as there won’t always be days like these.