CAP post-2027 · Our submission, Part III
The sectors the system forgot — and how the books balance.
Forestry, sheep and wool, the hills, horticulture, pigs and poultry, farm energy, and the dairy-beef bridge. Every proposal with its funding line beside it — because a submission that won't show its sums is asking someone else to do its arguing.
⬇ Download Part III (Word) Part I — the beef plan Part II — land mobility
Parts I and II spent the coupled ceiling on the suckler cow and the finisher, and put a retirement package under the land. Part III finishes the job: the sectors the current system quietly forgot. One rule runs through it — the coupled pot is spent once, every other proposal names its own pot, and where a real trade-off exists it is declared, not hidden. There is exactly one.
Ireland leaves €150 million a year of coupled-payment headroom unused while telling farmers there's no money. This Part doesn't ask for new money — it asks that what's on the table be spent on the people doing the work.
Forestry — plant for the family, not the fund
The €1.3 billion Forestry Programme is 100% exchequer money, already voted, entirely outside CAP. The failures are design: licence delays that rob a farmer of a pension he already planted, and premiums that let an investment fund outbid the young farmer for the same ground. Front-load the premium the way Part I front-loads the cow payment — top rates where land stays with a farm family — add agroforestry a drystock man can use without losing BISS on the parcel, and put a statutory clock on licences. Funding line: the existing programme, redesigned. CAP draw: zero.
Sheep and wool — pay the flock's quality, publish the wool price
A quality-scaled ewe payment built on the Sheep Improvement Scheme chassis through Pillar II — and this is the submission's one declared trade-off, said plainly: a coupled ewe payment would trim the cattle rate, so sheep go through Pillar II instead. Wool is worse than unsupported — it's a cost: 30c/kg lowland and 15–20c hill against €3–4 to shear, while the world market runs over €7/kg. Mandatory weekly price reporting through the Irish Grown Wool Council, a demand floor from State retrofits specifying wool insulation, and scouring capacity on this island. We've started the first part ourselves — the only published weekly Irish wool price is now on this site.
The hills, commonage and walks
Hill farmers maintain the grazed uplands, stiles and paths the tourism industry banks every summer, for a token Walks Scheme payment that reaches a fraction of the ground. A proper eco-scheme action for grazed, accessible, fire-managed hills, paid to the commonage shareholders doing the work. Funding line: the existing €297m/yr eco-scheme envelope, reallocated.
Horticulture — the fewest hands, the thinnest price
Fewer commercial growers left than any sector, selling perishable produce to a handful of retail buyers on terms nobody sees. Full Unfair Trading Practices enforcement through the Agri-Food Regulator, published price and margin data, and the EU producer-organisation funds Ireland barely touches. CAP draw: zero.
Pigs and poultry — transparency, not payments
The sectors CAP forgot: little land, no coupled payment, no headage. Roughly 280 pig herds selling into a handful of processors on a take-it-or-leave-it weekly quote; poultry growers rearing on contract with no published price in existence. The ask is a rule, not a cheque: mandatory price and contract reporting through the Agri-Food Regulator. The capital side already exists and stacks — the €500,000 TAMS pig and poultry ceiling plus the standalone solar ceiling, because their sheds are the best solar roofs in the country.
The farm as power station
Three facts rarely told together: TAMS solar pays 60% on its own €90,000 ceiling, separate from the general one — the shed grant doesn't eat the roof grant. Land under panels keeps BISS and CRISS where sheep graze it. And wind or solar leases are private capital costing the public purse nothing. A roofs-first farm energy policy, payments guaranteed on grazed solar ground, and a farmer-ownership stake in what's built on farmland. This section doesn't spend the envelope — it brings money in. For the retiring farmer in Part II's package, the shed roof becomes a pension supplement with not a cow left in the yard.
The dairy-beef bridge
Most Irish beef is now born in the dairy herd, and whether it can kill young and in spec is decided the day the dairy farmer picks a straw. A dairy-beef breeding measure — high Commercial Beef Value AI and sexed semen, verified through ICBF — welds the whole submission together: quality from birth to factory, whichever herd the calf is born in. And dairy holds the proof of the entire argument: every co-op's milk price is published to the cent, league tables monthly, and nobody calls it anti-competitive. The dairy man already has what the rest of us are asking for.
The common thread
A pig farmer taking a quote he can't verify, a grower who has never seen a published price, a sheep farmer handing over wool for less than the shearing cost — all the same story as the beef farmer at the factory gate: negotiating blind and alone against an operation that sees the whole board. Every measure in this Part publishes a price, enforces a contract term, or pays for a public good in the open. That's not an add-on to this submission. It's the platform it was written on.
Know what your produce made? Put it on the record.
Cattle, sheep, wool, straw, or a price nobody publishes at all — report it anonymously and the next farmer negotiates with his eyes open.
Report your price Real farm-gate prices, reported by farmers.