Danny Healy-Rae warns fertiliser price surge threatens farms

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I have the opportunity to talk a few words about this very serious matter. I am thankful to Fabian Santini for hearing this, but I am worried that he does not understand the seriousness of the situation that the farmers that we are representing, that we are elected up here to this House here, Mr Dail Eireann, to represent him, or if the European body understands what farmers are facing. If we went back four or five years ago, Mr Santini, farmers here were told to increase production, to increase the production of milk and milk-based products as well. Mr Dail Eireann, we were told, and they were told that milk was the new white gold, and now that is the fact, and they were told it was the new white gold, and that they have to increase production. Mr Dail Eireann, but in all, in one full swoop, all these fellows that have their shot, and everything else, and every bob and copper they had put into their farms, with new machinery, with more cows, and all the costs that are involved, to deal with the environmental, to deal with the manure, and whatever comes out of it, Mr Dail Eireann, they have to deal with the waste, and they have a lot of money spent to that end as well, to be environmentally friendly. They have their level best to them. I am only delivering the message. The farmers out in the country where I represent, they are saying this is suiting the Green Agenda. As you know, we have a government here now that is driven by the Green Agenda. Mr Dail Eireann, and when the Greens say jump, the question is, our Taoiseach and the Tarnasher, how high? Mr Dail Eireann, this man is across his man. Mr Dail Eireann, I will move away from that, but I have not taught any laws. You mentioned about organic fertiliser. I do not know where the options are for the that all of a sudden, or where the whole farmers can supplement as it stands. Many of them do not have fertiliser of any kind, because they cannot afford it. Those that can afford it may try to for a short time. The big question that I am asking you is, how long is this price increase going to last? You are here to talk to us and to tell us, and I am here to take the message down the country to the people that I am representing. How long is this increase, savage increase? Does it double increase? 50% or more in each product, whether it is urea or whether it is pasta or nitrogen or whatever it is. It has all been doubled. And you see, the milkmen will try for a while to deal with this problem and try to carry on because, like I said, there is so much footprint. But then, what is going to happen to the bee fellows, the subtle cows, the fellows down in the poor land, and they need the fertiliser. They do not have that much good ground and they need to ensure father for the winter and ensure that their cows have enough grass to drive on the cows. And we were told to feed them in grass. And we believed that we were doing better than other countries that are feeding them inside in system units all the year, all the summer. And I see myself over in America. But in case anyone thinks that this is just a farmer's problem. This is going to be a consumer problem. And how is that going to be dealt with? Because we were told at the very start and all along through the farm based payments, the payments that the farmers were getting were to make up. The checks that they got on the porch was to make up for not being paid for their produce properly. But what is going to happen now? Because the consumers will not be able to buy the food that they were used to buying because the price of that is going to go up. We think that the farmers are going to get out every morning and maybe give half the night out, calving cows, and get out in the morning and milk cows and have nothing left. And like was stated there by the chairman, and rightly so, many of these are in fixed price contracts. And I think that even in this position that we are in, we should be asking the government to ensure that none of these contracts can stand because this was totally unforeseen. And so, my question as well there, that's the other question. Consumers, are we going, like I mean, you're saying that we're over producing, but who's going to step into the breach? Is it Brazil or Argentina or South America? I mean, I didn't hear that there was any food or any produce being dumped anywhere. It was all being used. Are we going to leave people hungry somewhere? Is that going to happen? There are already, I believe, over 700 million people going hungry. Okay, Danny. Seven minutes of a question. Okay, Danny. So, how long do you think farmers can keep going? Because they won't be able to produce as much if they can't afford the fertilizer, the nitrogen and the urea. How long do you think these poor, honest, hardworking people can stay at it? If you think that they're going to stay producing food and with no, I mean, the record is back over the years, farmers might have one good year out of five. They break even for three and they lose, maybe two years as well. They lose out, but the cost of keeping going now is too much and the fuel and everything. I'm asking you talking to us here on behalf of the European body. How long is this going to last? Are we going to seek? Is this happening worldwide? Is it only happening in Europe? Is it to blow us out a bit altogether to suit the green agenda? Is that the way that production is going to be cut? Because we have been getting hints of this. All right, Chairman. Thank you very much. Okay, Mr Santini. I suppose the principle is how long do you think this price increase will last? And what impact do you think it's going to have on consumers? Yeah, how long is a million dollar question always making projections is always difficult, but we are trying as European Commission, but also the our counterparts in other, in other major countries, the USDA is trying to make estimates. Everybody is trying to project and to plan about what will come. The difficulty here is that we're depending on another area, which is the energy markets, and there's a really tight link between both of them. So we also have to make projections about the energy markets. And if you look at the main estimates that are floating around of private agencies and public agencies, they all consider that the bottlenecks, the supply bottlenecks, the difficulties of logistics due to COVID, the fact that we're also paying the price of past events, past events, all these should a little bit should result in more reasonable price trends this year when it's difficult, but this is difficult to know, but along this year, if you look at the curves, you can find in some specialist editions, you see that the prices are going down, not to the level concerning fertilizer to what they were before this event, but at a lower and more reasonable, reasonable event. Of course, these are projections of other events that are occurring and we're living in a certain world with more risks in general. So you never know what will happen. But overall, this is the expectations. Again, as I said, there are price transmission mechanism in the food supply chain that when the costs are increasing, they are passed little by little to the next stages. And this is not necessarily reassuring, but it's reassuring for the farmers that not everything is on their shoulders, then the processors and the retailers and the consumers will have to take part of these costs on board. This means that there will be attention for food inflation increase of food for consumers. Of course, we are talking of an element, if you take globally, of six to seven percent of the cost of production of agricultural products, which themselves come to, I don't know, 10, 20 percent of the final cost of food. Because you have a lot of the cost, because you have the transport, you have the processing, you have the electricity in the supermarket, you have plenty of other logistical costs that end up in the end. So we are not dealing with, specifically with the fertilizer costs, something that can create a doubling of the price of food. But it has an impact, but it has an impact and it will be passed. And there are other impacts because the energy price is not only affecting fertilizer, it's also affecting the electricity bills of supermarkets and food industries. So this surge in energy price has a global impact on the economy and will result, and you've seen it in the press already, in some inflation, including for food. Hopefully with a limited time span, and that's the expectations of the major thing. And just to answer, this is worldwide. It's not only in Europe that the energy prices have increased and that there is such impact. And if you look at the headlines in the US about food inflation, the prices of food for other reasons, not only for energy, also for probably much more bottlenecks in their supply chain than in the EU, they are probably less prepared than our food sector. And you have more people absent from slaughterhouses and companies and more disruption. So you have more, you have other reasons that explain also food inflation in the US, and that's its sole problem in the US. And of course, this means higher food prices as an economic consequences for consumers, for the poorer ones, food poverty, like we'd say, risks to increase. And that's a political problem for sure. So that's why it's something that is carefully looked at the impact of energy price on food prices and on the rest of the economy is a real challenge for the EU economies right now. And we have to look at that. Hopefully the people who are projecting that it will smoothen and relax in the coming year. All right. So, let's look at that. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.