The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) has proposed a definition of an active farmer which it believes should be prioritised in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Last July, the European Commission outlined its proposals for a "simpler, more targeted and future-orientated" CAP after 2027 as part of its plans for the next EU long-term budget, known as the Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF).

Under the proposals, the next CAP, covering the period from 2028-2034, would move away from the traditional two-pillar structure.

The commission's legal proposal recommends that future CAP funding should be focused on "active farmers", and that agriculture should be the principal activity of the farmer.

ICMSA

ICMSA president Denis Drennan said that the next CAP budget "must be sufficient to ensure that the key issues for EU Farm Policy can be adequately addressed - and that means an increased CAP budget".

"The second issue, and no less important, is that CAP must be firmly focused on active farmers producing food in a sustainable manner, and by active farmers ICMSA means a minimum 1 livestock unit (LU) per hectare stocking density," he said.

The ICMSA president added that "CAP payments should be going to farmers who are producing food and dependent on food production for income".

Drennan acknowledged that "not everyone will agree with the ICMSA proposal", but he insisted that, as a State, it was "time for us to face reality".

"We are asking farmers producing food to take on more and more regulations while, simultaneously, these very same farmers have seen their CAP supports continuously undermined over the last 10 years to breaking point.

"As a sector, we are asking ourselves about generational renewal and where will the new food producers come from?

"If we are to answer that – and we have to – then CAP and the definition of an active farmer are going to be part of the answer," he said.

Drennan said the debate over the definition of an active farmer has been ongoing since 2005.

"The result is that farmers producing food continue to suffer losses to payments and people 'farming schemes' are effectively prioritised over people farming to produce food and delivering net foreign earnings for the Irish economy," he said.

"There needs to be a debate on this critical issue, but one thing is for certain: we cannot continue with a status quo that is failing the present generation of food producing farmers and ‘shutting’ out the next generation.

"We need a real and workable definition of an active farmer in the next CAP and ICMSA believes a minimum stocking density is the correct and most practical method of arriving at that definition," Drennan said.