Challenge is to keep farmers in profit while changing their ways

“IT’S hard to be green when in the red,” sums up the challenge faced by many farmers over the coming years, according to a leading Irish academic.

Michael Hayden, Assistant Professor of Accounting at Maynooth University, has warned that farmers face a major challenge when trying to balance economic sustainability with environmental sustainability.

“If we want to maintain a sustainable food supply, economic sustainability should not be sacrificed for environmental sustainability.

“Instead, the focus should be on educating farmers and changing work practices to meet the dual agenda of economic and environmental sustainability,” said Michael Hayden.

Writing in the latest edition of the Teagasc TResearch magazine, he points out that many of the farm enterprises in Ireland are ‘financially vulnerable’ with a high reliance on subsidies to provide financial support.

He said that this was particularly the case for beef, sheep and tillage farmers with 87% of beef farmers, 75% of sheep farmers, and 63% of tillage farmers, acknowledging in the 2021 Irish Farm Report, that their enterprises did not provide them with an adequate income.

“With rising costs of farm inputs, such as fuel, fertiliser and feed, placing additional pressure on profit margins for food producers, the outlook for 2022 farm incomes is bleak.

“Recent events such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have also increased the complexity of this situation, placing renewed focus on the necessity of having a sustainable food supply,” said Mr. Hayden.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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