Tillage Sector: Statements Dail Éireann — 2025-10-15 ============================================================ Martin Kenny (SF), Sligo-Leitrim I welcome this debate also. It is very appropriate that we are having it. We had people from the tillage sector before the agriculture committee about two weeks ago. I made the point to one of them that in my part of the country, County Leitrim, the greatest amount of tillage, which people still talk about, was during the Emergency, when compulsory tillage was introduced by de Valera. Many people are still complaining about it because the land was not appropriate at all for growing crops of the kind that were grown. Like every other sector of farming, it is all connected. Whatever people are doing, it is connected to another sector. It could be connected with the need to get straw, which they need for bedding, from the tillage industry or with the need to get grain for feed, which also comes from the tillage industry. This is why our interconnected agricultural system needs all its sectors to be working well together. The Minister of State mentioned that other sectors have had difficult times. The tillage sector is now where many of those other sectors were a few years ago. At the moment, we have great prices for cattle and sheep, etc., but they were very poor for the past decade. The tillage sector is very poor at the moment, and we can go into all the reasons for it. The tillage sector is an integral part of Irish farming, producing high-quality animal feed and bedding for the livestock sector and ingredients for the food and drink industry. The sector makes a significant contribution to the economy, which is estimated at between €1.3 billion and €1.9 billion per annum. It is also important in terms of employment and is estimated to support up to 11,000 full-time jobs or equivalent jobs. The Minister of State also mentioned the vegetable sector. I understand there are between 4,200 ha and 4,500 ha in field vegetables annually, which are valued at €73 million to €76 million per annum. Ireland is about 60% self-sufficient in vegetables, so that means we have to import 40% of the vegetables we eat in this country. This is something else we need to look at from a food security perspective. The sector employs about 1,000 people. Around 300,000 tonnes of grain are used in the drinks industry annually in this country. The volume of grain imported annually by the drinks industry is growing each year. This is an important point. It is not a requirement that Irish whiskey or spirits use Irish grain to be classified as Irish. This is an issue. I am not saying that we should have 100% Irish grain in these products, but there should certainly be a percentage of it for them to be labelled as Irish. I understand there can be volatility. The total amount produced can be weather dependent and harvests can go up and down in different years, so this may mean there may need to be imported grain at different times. Between 2014 and 2018, grain imports for the drinks industry ranged between 50,000 tonnes and 135,000 tonnes. Irish farmers have mainly stopped growing grain for human consumption, for example, in products such as flour. Ireland imports the majority of its flour. Around 69% of it comes from the UK, 11% from Germany and 8% from France. There are, of course, significant challenges in the tillage industry. Grain prices have been on the floor for many years and cheaper imported grains have been coming in from all over the world. We have very high-quality beef and dairy products and much of the feed used in these areas comes from Latin America. There are issues relating to food security, etc. that need to be considered. Europe as a whole has a problem in that we are not producing enough protein within the European Union. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with and one of the opportunities to do that is through the production of grain. Tillage farmers have been priced out of the market. This is certainly the case in the rental sector in a lot of areas mainly because of the dairy sector. The tillage sector, though, also faces rising costs for machinery, fertiliser, sprays, etc. The Government has committed to there being 400,000 ha by 2030. It is unlikely it is going to meet this target. The 2025 target has not been met. A big part of this, obviously, is the viability of the industry because of the situation we are in with regard to the prices farmers are getting for their products. Sinn Féin would provide proper funding for the tillage and horticulture sector. We need to see this proper funding put in place. These farmers are farming a product that has a much lower carbon footprint than other farming practices. It needs investment and to be able to expand. We know the tillage sector is in crisis. Even straw prices are on the floor. The sector requires support to prevent the loss of jobs and a further reliance on imports of grain, flour, vegetables and so on. We really need to put in the effort to ensure that this whole sector can come up to the mark and provide the kind of resilience needed within it but farmers will only invest in this sector if they can see there will be an outcome from it. We had representatives of the tillage industry before the agriculture committee a couple of weeks ago. Matt Dempsey was one of the people who headed up a committee on this issue recently. He made an interesting point. He said the change in EU policy away from one that facilitated the production of grain in Europe was something that happened about 20 years ago. He is talking about the fact that a little bit of protection was put in place then. When prices around the world were very low and that meant grain would flow into Europe from other places, the protection in place meant it could not come in. When prices rose, less protection was applied. There was, therefore, a system that ensured the industry was kept right. It has been taken away and this is a serious issue that must be dealt with. The Minister also mentioned the quality assurance scheme. A big effort needs to be put in to ensure we put a proper quality assurance scheme in place to provide for the tillage sector across the length and breadth of the country. He mentioned the big meeting, where we heard that up to 1,000 farmers attended. They would not be out doing that if they did not recognise there was a serious problem in this sector. That serious problem requires serious attention and this is why as much effort as we can put into it needs to happen. That should certainly be the case from a financial perspective. However, there are also changes that can happen, such as the stuff about Irish products being classified as Irish without using Irish ingredients. That issue needs to be dealt with. There is also the issue of feed for our animals. An awful lot of it is imported from outside the European Union. This is something else that must be dealt with. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:13+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-10-15