The new CAP

The quarry men upped the price as the building trade had taken off and the supply chain pressures caused by COVID and the Ukraine war drove inflation.

Back to to the CAP, I see it going full flattening the of payments. That would mean entitlements essentially gone and a payment per ha with top up for certain eco schemes.

Big one I have harped on about here a lot before and I think it will get traction. Pension and entitlements, it will be either one or the other for folks. It's the only way that age profile of farmers can improve. Add in the safety factor it's a no brainers. Long term the CAP is going to see fewer farmers but bigger farmers in Ireland.

And of course this cap will have a few who will work the scheme to their advantage by working in the cracks and grey areas

The liming scheme was a perfect example of a scheme that should have never come in, my lime delivered and spread was 18 per ton it then went to 35 per ton and is still that price but the scheme was only a once off now nobody wants to put out lime because of the cost of it.

Eu payment is already flattened lads entitlements are no longer relevant as flattering has already happened, my wish for eu payment would be a max of 10k for the largest farmers but smaller lads should get a few thousand each per year but it should be linked to stocking rates so the armchair farmers with minimum stock for 7 months should only get very small total payment

10k max isn’t worth a fiddlers to most farms .
lime was 23 a ton spread around me for years. It’s currently 32 a ton and some of the best money anyone can spend on a farm. It was one of those items that just didn’t move in price and was going to rise regardless due to haulage and labour costs, the grant just gave them a reason.

10k is more than 9k, it's just a figure I threw out the reality is their is going to be around 30% less subsidy money coming to irish farmers each year from 2 years time onwards it's just a question of who takes the hit, I know of a lot of farmers getting 15 to 50 k per year and the truth is they have become very inefficient in their daily farm work like buying machinery they don't need or renting land at crazy prices just to milk extra cows they don't need or to grow more barley knowing they are losing money on it, if a farmer were getting 10k a year less you'd find that suddenly that extra 20 acres at 500 per acre wouldn't be rented and he'd actually make more profit

.If payments tied to production this will lead to extra stock. In turn we will need new markets. If we are going to be flooded with Argentian beef where are we going to get rid of our own?