Two timely suggestions from EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan last week appear to make it clear that the tide might be going out on support for small unviable farms. However, the reaction to Hogan's suggestion to pay unviable suckler farmers to reduce their stock numbers has been notably muted. This brings us nicely to Mr Hogan's second suggestion (see Page 3) that older farmers could be paid to transfer land to young farmers. However, it didn't solve the problem that very few of our farmers are young. So any scheme or factor that leads to long-term structural change in the age profile of farmers should be welcomed.

Source: Irish Independent June 09, 2019 05:37 UTC