Beef and dairy farmer Martin Crowe has already started to adjust to the new realities of European farming by phasing out his beef operation.
Crowe, who milks 55 cows on his 100-acre farm on the Limerick/Tipperary border, had traditionally purchased 50 bull calves each year, but this year he has already reduced that to 30 and intends to phase it out altogether.
"Very few people who are in beef production can hold on to their beef premiums. They have to cut into them and that is the acid test," he says. It is possible, he suggests, that there could be a dramatic decline in the suckler (beef-producing) herd when the necessity to have animals to collect premiums disappears next year.
Before a national suckler quota was established, it was estimated there were 700,000 suckler cows in the State, and that grew almost immediately to 1.2 million animals," he explains. "I suspect that following decoupling, it could shrink just as rapidly as it grew."
Like other young farmers, Crowe does not believe that the changes will make milk quotas available to young commercial farmers to expand their operations.
"For the guys in their 50s, giving up farming completely is not an option because they will find it difficult to get other work," he says. However, he knows of farmers who are beginning to work the system to their advantage.
"There is one man who told me that he has a 180-acre farm which he means to split in half and plant half of it in forestry. He intends to apply to join the Rural Environment Protection Scheme as well," says Crowe. "That will maximise the payments he can receive on his land and it should make him reasonably comfortable."
Crowe believes that the reforms are likely to accelerate the number of farmers leaving the land, but that has been happening for the last 30 years, he points out. "There are only three full-time farmers left in the whole parish of Doon, which had dozens of farms on which families were raised when I was growing up." He is well aware that many older farmers could not find a family member to take over their farms when they got older.
"It is very difficult for any young person who has got used to picking up a weekly wage to come back to a system which is totally different," he comments. "There will be very challenging times ahead but those who plan their lives properly should be able to survive well enough into the future.
"I have a concern that the single payment being made to farmers, which has been promised for 10 years, may not last that long," he says. "The last time CAP was reformed, that was Agenda 2000, the agreement only lasted two years before being dramatically changed. How can we rely on this one?"
But Crowe believes there will be a future for those who carefully tread the new road and concentrate on quality production at all costs. Married with one child, he is confident that he will be able to stay on his farm and raise his family there despite the changes Brussels may bring to his life.
