Just 10,000 farmers to be left by 2025, states report

IRELAND - Only 10,000 full-time farmers will be left by 2025 compared to just over 40,000 now if current trends continue, according to a Government-funded report to be launched today by Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan, writes Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent

The report on rural Ireland, drawn up by scientists from NUI Maynooth, University College Dublin and Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, warns of an "unacceptable regional balance in Ireland's economy" in 20 years. It predicts "serious failures to achieve the declared [Government] policy goals for rural Ireland".

"It is unlikely that by 2025 Ireland will have appreciably more than 10,000 full-time commercial farmers, comprising predominantly dairy farmers, 1,000 or so commercial dry stock farmers, with roughly a similar number of sheep producers and a few hundred pig enterprises," it said.

The report, which has been seen by The Irish Times and states as its aim "to provide perspectives of Irish rural and coastal areas to 2025", says population, commercial agriculture and modern enterprises will be even more concentrated in the east and south of the country than at present.

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Source: Irish Times

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