Oireachtas Joint Committee Hearings on Organic Farming 2015

This is an exceptionally long post of interest to those in the organic sector. Its contains much of the proceedings from a pair of Oireachtas joint committee on Organic Farming.

It starts with the Organic Farmers Representative Body (OFRB) presentign their case, and concludes with Paul Dillon and others form the Department responding. The Cert bodies were contacted by myself about a response but declined.

I've left it pretty much as is, but towards the end do make some points too, on the number of cert bodies and on stocking rates for hill farmers with commonage, which are hopefully clearly from me and not anyone else.

Full text of the first and second Committee meetings.

BEGINS

Inadequate, late and anti-small farmer organic payments; the function and legitimacy of certification bodies and stocking rate rules which mitigate against hill farmers. These were three of the main issues members of the Organic Farmers Representative Body (OFRB) brought to the attention of TDs and Senators at the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine debate in early October.

Padraic Finnegan, chair of the OFRB, pointed out that “the introduction of double funding has impacted very severely on farmers with a few hectares as they can no longer benefit from both the GLAS and organic schemes. A severe financial cut has been imposed on the smaller producer. We seek to have the schemes front-loaded to lessen the impact on those with small farms.”
“To maximise payments, a farmer with 20 ha might decide that he will put 10 ha into the GLAS scheme. He is then left with 10 ha in the organic scheme because he cannot claim on both schemes. He still has to pay the certification bodies for the entire 20 ha, which, again, makes it far less viable for him.”

The core problem here is that there is a maximum payment of E5000 for GLAS. A small farmer simply may not have enough land to have both a GLAS area and an organic area on his farm – double funding rules prevent two payments on the same area. However a farmer with more acreage can have two areas in the two schemes, and easily reach the maximum payment of E5000 under GLAS.
Priority access into GLAS for organic farmers as it’s called could be seen as a double edged sword:

“The Department is now telling us that if an organic farmer pulls out of organic farming, he will be kicked out of the GLAS scheme as well. The Department knows what it has done. This is an attempt to trap the farmers.”

Higher payments for first hectares would not, the OFRB claim, disadvantage the larger farmer, who could get the same overall amount anyway, if weighted to achieved this. However higher first hectare payments would benefit the smaller farmer.

Their suggestion was €340 for the first 20 hectares; €225 for the next 20 and then €115.
Late payments are another concern. Last year, there was a late payment, which was put down to an industrial dispute.

However “we always have a problem in getting paid - payments under all other schemes are made on time” And the OFRB fear it will happen again:

“The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Hayes, gave us a commitment that this would never happen again as the organic farming scheme would be included in the electronic system, like all other schemes, but that has not happened. We were in contact with Johnstown Castle earlier this week and informed that the electronic payments system would apply only to new entrants and those included in the scheme previously would remain on the old system. I asked what progress had been made with the applications not included in the electronic system. The man said no files had yet arrived in Johnstown Castle from any area office in the country. This can have only one outcome - our payments will be late again this year.”

A factor pointed to by another OFRB member Enda Monaghan was the stocking rate for hill farmers. “At the moment we have to carry half a unit per hectare and on the mountain areas they are not carrying that. They might have three or four hectares for a half unit. Our payment is based on a stocking rate.” He suggested front loading or altering the payment rates for mountainous areas.

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Another major bone of contention with the OFRB is, it seems, the very existence of the organic certification bodies. They expressed concern at the cost, function and legitimacy of the organic certification bodies.

Padriag Finnegan is chairman of the OFRB. “The Department needs to define clearly the role of a certification body. We ask why the Department cannot do this work? What the certification body is charging farmers is absolutely scandalous. Sums ranging from 9% to 25% of the organic payment have to be paid to the certification body. I have three examples of fees paid to the certification body in the five year lifetime of the scheme: a farmer with 12 hectares pays €2,200; a farmer with 30 hectares pays €3,000, while a farmer with 50 hectares pays €3,100.The body not only collects fees from farmers, it also collects from factories, co-op marts, shops and butchers, etc. It is also funded by the Department. In its present form the scheme is completely biased in favour of the big farmer to the detriment of the small operator and needs to be reviewed urgently.”

Along with fees, the function of certification bodies was also brought up by Finnegan.
“Going back 20 years everything was done on paper. There was a big packet of forms sent out, some of which were needed and more which were not. Now everything is done online so that role is greatly diminished and there is little or none of it to be done. They used to go to livestock marts and the farmers had to straw-bed all the cattle. They would have their biros out and be writing things down. That is gone. We can sell organic cattle now at an ordinary mart. We have actually a sale coming up in Castlerea next Saturday and there will be a few pens of organic cattle. Their role has diminished.”

His colleague Enda Monaghan added “it was us that got ordinary marts to sell organic cattle. They were telling us we could only sell organic stock at an organic mart and they would have to be there to certify everything. We did a bit of research ourselves and in England there was no need for that. We went ahead and showed our research to the Minister, who allowed us to have our own marts. That brought down our costs as well.”

“We are one of the few schemes that are inspected every year by certification bodies. We have a document here that came from Frank Macken from the Department saying this was discussed at EU level, and the EU has no problem with going on to what they call a risk-based inspection arrangement. This means farmers' properties would not have to be inspected every year. In my case - I have been involved in organics for 13 or 14 years - I have never had a black mark against me and would be seen as low risk. However, my property is inspected every year. Mr. Connelly and I went to Brussels in the spring and met some people from the European Commission who told us this issue had been raised there but that, oddly enough, Ireland had voted against it and wanted to retain the existing system. It would be interesting to know who voted against it in Brussels. Clearly, the European Union has no problem with setting up a risk-based system that would lower the cost of certification.”

Finnegan and both TDs and Senators present called for the Certification Bodies and Department to attend the Joint Committee.

Both IOFGA and Organic Trust - the two main certification bodies in Ireland - were given the opportunity to comment, but declined.

Presumably, their sides will be presented at Joint Committee. When they are, this column will air their positions.

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Following the appearance at the Joint Committee on agriculture by the organisation called the Organic Farmers Representative Body, the Department’s Organic Unit made an appearance.

Paul Dillon from the Organic Unit started. "At the outset, it should probably be said that the Organic Farmers Representative Body is not an umbrella organisation representing all or even most organic farmers. It represents a number of small livestock farmers and does so most effectively and efficiently. The usual forum for discussion between the Department and the organic farming sector is the Organic Focus Group, which meets quarterly under an independent chair and which is representative of the entire sector. The Organic Farmers Representative Body attends these meetings and the Department has also met independently with the body on several occasions to hear its views and to respond to its various proposals.addressed supports; double funding; payment delays and certification bodies."

Dillon in the main addressed three areas; double funding; payment delays and certification bodies.

Dillon pointed to the 60% increase in payments; the targeting of tillage and red clover and the general success of the scheme this year, with “870 applications in its first tranche. To put this in context, the highest number of applications ever received previously was 380 applications in 2010. In addition, over 500 of the 870 applicants are new entrants to organic farming.”

This will leave Ireland with 1600 organic farmers and 60,000 hectares certified organic.
Joan Furlong – also of the Organic Unit – pointed out that there will be 100 new tillage producers in the organic scheme, though she did not break this number down into tillage only and mixed tillage and livestock.

(In organic, the tillage numbers tend to be made up primarily of farmers growing their own feed, and sometimes selling some on to Flahavans in the case of oats or to other farmers for their feed requirements)

For double funding, he pointed out that “when similar actions are in place under both schemes” in this case GLAS and the organic farming scheme – “in such cases it is a clear stipulation of the European legislation that a risk of double-funding exists - that this must be explicitly addressed”.
For both schemes “income forgone and costs incurred” are the reason for the payments. “It was not an issue in REPS because the regulation was changed since REPS” Dillon emphasised.

For payments – late and manual – he apologised for the late payments, caused by an industrial dispute. He also added “I was asked about a manual versus automated system. Our original plan was that we would be able to transfer all of the existing scheme participants into the new scheme and that would all be automated via an online system. However, the Commission told us clearly that it would not allow us to do that. As such, we had to come up with a hybrid system. That is why we are stuck with some of the manual payments”

The Departmental subvention for certification bodies was named as E150 per visit. A supposed issue was the number of certification bodies, too high at five, it was claimed. At no point did anyone point out the blindingly obvious – to all intents and purposes there are only two in operation for the vast majority of farmers – the Organic Trust and IOFGA. The other three operate almost exclusively in fish farming.

Austria was cited as an exemplar, and it is – it has an overall representative body. Ireland’s organic sector is chronically incapable of establishing such a body.

Mountain farming and organics came up as an issue, but, unfortunately, the core issue was not addressed.

On commonage up in the hills and mountains, it’s simply not possible for the stocking rate to get up high enough to be at the organic rate. Usually, organic means a lower stocking rate, but in the hills and mountains, organic rules would impose an impractically high stocking rate. And farmers are penalised for not reaching the organic stocking rate.

If something could be done about this, many more hill farmers could enter the organic farming scheme: the high hills and mountains are very close to organic in consumer’s minds and in reality.
While farmers’ winter feed costs would be higher in organic, otherwise there would not be major changes required.

“We are open to constructive suggestions” Paul Dillon said.

Not penalising organic hill farmers for having a lower stocking rate in mountainous areas is such a suggestion.

ENDS

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