Targets set by the Government to plant 60,000 acres of forest annually have fallen far short of expectation and only half of this is being planted, a conference in Dublin was told yesterday.
Mr Jim Reidy, the National Forestry Development officer with Teagasc, told the National Forestry Conference, that between 1990 and 1998, Irish farmers planted over 300,000 acres. He said the five counties of Connacht, with Clare and Donegal, accounted for 40 per cent of this afforestation but currently afforestation was running at 30,000 acres per year, compared with a target of 60,000 acres annually set down in the National Forestry Strategy.
"If current trends continue, a total of 20,000 farmers will have a total forestry bank of 0.5 million acres by 2006 compared to a target in the National Forestry Strategy of 30,000 farmers with 0.75 million acres of forestry," he said.
Earlier, Mr Reidy said the increase in EU direct payments to farmers will have a negative impact on afforestation levels in the country.
He said that when the new CAP reforms come into being from January 2000, farmers will be even more reluctant to consider forestry as an enterprise and this will have implications for the national strategy to more than double forestry acreage.
"From a national economic point of view a substantial amount of land could be planted with trees without any negative impact on agricultural production," he said.
"However, the increased suckle cow and cattle payments as well as new incentives for more extensive farming and payments under the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, will force farmers to fill their quotas and retain land for agriculture in order to maximise benefit from the improved direct payments," he said.
"The reality is that the new CAP reforms are not compatible with the national strategy to double forestry acreage except for afforestation on larger farms.
"With new payments in place it will not make economic sense for the typical 60 acre dry stock farmer, who is not in a position to get an off-farm job, to divert land to forestry," he said.
Mr Martin Lowery, the Chief Executive of Coillte, called for urgent action to promote forestry among farmers to ensure the targets are met.
He told the A Future in Forestry conference, organised by Teagasc and the Irish Forestry Industry Chain, that forestry offers great advantages to farmers who wanted to work part time of the land.
He said the main reasons targets had not been met, was because of the difficulty of sourcing land at economically viable prices.
He said it had to be recognised that increased job-availability for part-time farmers, together with alternative EU funded income sources, had reduced the demand to sell land.
The industry had to ensure that farmers viewed forestry as a wealth creating enterprise and had to recognise the importance of environmental issues to consumers generally.
Mr Brendan Kearney, the agricultural economist, said the 1996 forestry targets may have to be revised downwards, but forestry was one of the few remaining ways of more fully exploiting Irish land resources.