Press Room

Speaking at the Teagasc Agriculture and Food 06 event at Kildalton College in Piltown today, Macra na Feirme president Colm Markey said that all barriers to genuine farm partnerships must be removed to allow farmers to gain economies of scale by farming in partnership. He also said that new types of partnership arrangements needed to be developed.

Mr. Markey pointed out that given the rapid pace of change in Irish farming, interest was now increasing in partnership farming and that as much as possible should be done to facilitate their establishment.

Mr. Markey said that Macra had made the facilitation of genuine farm partnerships one of its key issues in the social partnership talks and that he was confident that the matter would be favourably dealt with if there were a final agreement between the Government and the farm organisations.

The young farmer leader pointed out that while the establishment of formal structures to allow dairy farmers to form partnerships had been relatively successful, there were still only 391 formal partnerships in the country and that 335 of these were partnerships between parents and children.

'These partnerships are providing a gateway into to the industry for young people who can get involved in the management of the farm at a young age even if their parents are still a long way from retirement,' he said.

Mr. Markey said that new type partnership structures also needed to be explored to allow young people to get involved in farming and to grow their business to take advantage of scale.

'With the huge increases in land prices, purchasing land to enter farming or expand your business is no longer a realistic option for most farmers. Young people who are enthusiastic about farming need to be provided with opportunities to pursue a career in agriculture. We need to look at structures such as share farming, multiple partnerships and allowing farmers who are currently farming together informally to set up formal partnerships,' he said.

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