Farming courses through the veins of Tipperary ICMSA president Pat McCormack

Farming courses through the veins of Tipperary’s Pat McCormack, president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association.

The man who comes from Donaskeagh just on the border between the parish of Tipperary Town and Donaskeagh, never wanted to do anything else.

“Farming was something I always had a keen interest in,” he says.

Pat began his education in the local Donaskeagh National School before attending secondary college in St Ailbe’s in Tipperary Town.

From there he went to Rockwell Agriculture College with three on his classmates, to do the Green Cert course.

“That was one of the final years of Rockwell College which was something we didn’t know at the time. It’s a key cornerstone missing out of Tipperary agriculture,” says Pat.

But those three are still involved in full time farming, which, he points out, “unfortunately can’t be said for the other 110 there at the time”.

The McCormacks have always been dairy farmers, supplying to Tipperary Co-op and the Alleens branch before that and ahead of it being amalgamated into Tipperary Co-op over 40 years ago

He says he was “fortunate enough” in that there was a retirement scheme in the late 90s, in 1998 and he inherited at home.

But the challenges he faced then are nothing compared to what is there now.

“It has got challenging and I would say that everywhere I go. Farming has got extremely complex with the paperwork. There was a quota regime and there were restrictions there for farmers that wanted to expand. Obviously 2015 came with the abolition of quotas, increasing milk productions and no more evidence than that in the autumn of 2018 albeit after a difficult summer,” he states.

Pat points out that today, farmers can do an awful lot online, including selling animals.

“Farming has very much followed modern society into the era of technology,” says they ICMSA president who marked one year in the role this month.

He also points out that the economic sustainability of a one labour unit is being challenged all the time because the costs are rising significantly and at the same time there isn’t an awareness among consumers of food, that there is a significant cost in producing it to the quality that it is produced in Ireland.

“It’s a challenge for Bord Bia to bridge that. They have educated farmers very well on the buy-in to all those schemes but they need to educate the consumer on the cost associated with those schemes,” he says.

So does he see a disconnect between the consumer and farmers because farming is seen as a global operation and prices are set by as much as what is happening in Argentina as in Carrick on Suir. How do you get around that challenge?

“That is the difficulty. That is the where the education needs to be. They (the consumer) want the European or the Irish produced production model at the Argentinian price and that is the challenge. We are not comparing like with like. You can either buy the cheese but the chalk won't taste the same,” is his response.

Obviously, the ICMSA’s main focus is on dairy and dairy prices, and with some forecasters predicting a good year in 2019, does he necessarily agree?

“For 2018, milk prices are in and around 32cpl. If we were asked last January we would have accepted it as a reasonable price, but the issue in 2018 for the dairy farmer was the cost of production with the level of concentrates.

“Obviously we had a glorious summer if you wanted to go to the beach, but growing grass was extremely difficult. I was at a meeting the other night where a member said that they would traditionally use 400,000 tonnes of concentrates and this year they are heading towards 700,000. That has to be paid for by somebody and that is a huge cost on the producer,” he says.