Minister cannot influence price of Irish beef in Paris or Berlin

Farmers must get a fair share of the retail price for their beef but they cannot expect the Minister for Agriculture to influence retailers in Paris or Berlin to pay more for Irish beef if they can get it elsewhere, Simon Coveney said yesterday.

Cattle farmers have been urging Mr Coveney to do more to support them following the fall in factory prices. "Beef is a huge priority for me. It's the heartbeat of the rural economy," he said after arriving at the National Ploughing Championships.

He added that “100,000 of the 130,000 farm families get some income from beef so we need the beef sector to be functioning and working”.

But he said 90 per cent of beef was exported. “So I’m not going to be able to influence a retailer in Barcelona or in Paris or Berlin to pay more for Irish beef when they can source beef from elsewhere. We need to be price competitive,” he said.

Fair share

“What we need to do collectively as a European Union is to ensure that primary producers of food get a fair share of market price on the retail shelf. Ten years ago, primary producers would have been getting in or around 30 per cent of the final price. They are now getting less than 20 per cent in many cases for a lot of food products and that’s because of the way the retail sector has moved.”

He said supermarket chains were more powerful now “and they drive a harder bargain with primary producers”.

Rise in output

He also noted that Irish farmers had increased their beef output volume by about 15 per cent this year. “So when you have an increased output and you’re selling into a weaker market, then prices weaken,” he said.

“But there will be years when the opposite happens, like what happened last year, when we had an all-time high in terms of beef prices. So we need to try and insulate our industry as best we can from the bad years to ensure that they are benefiting in the good years.”

Mr Coveney said agricultural taxation measures to be announced in next month’s budget would be “very progressive” and would respond to challenges like climate change and passing land to the next generation.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan had shown "a real willingness to look with an open mind at how we can support this sector into the future and I think there'll be a lot to study and talk about and chew on, on budget day when they see the taxation measures".