Final CAP post-2027 submission · Part IV

Horticulture and tillage — every risk carried, no price set.

Two sectors that buy almost every major input at a transparent market price, then sell into markets where farm-gate prices and contract terms are rarely published. Part III gave them a paragraph each. They are worth a Part.

Submitted by Brendan Kennedy  ·  Working farmer, Co. Tipperary  ·  July 2026

⬇ Download Part IV (Word)

Part I directed the available coupled-support headroom towards the suckler cow and the finisher. Part II extended the retirement and transfer package across sheep, tillage and dairy. Part III named the sectors the current system has overlooked and put a funding line beside every proposal. This Part returns to two of those sectors because a paragraph was not enough.

A tillage farmer and a horticulture grower buy seed, fertiliser, fuel, packaging, machinery and labour at prices that are visible before the work begins. They then sell into markets where the farm-gate price, contract terms, rejection rates and buyer margins are often invisible.

That is not simply a complaint about margin. It is a description of a bargaining position. It is also the same position the beef farmer faces at the factory gate, which is why transparency runs through this entire submission.

A suckler or finishing farmer at least has a published factory quote from which to begin an argument. A grower may have only one buyer's offer and no dependable comparison anywhere in the country.

Tillage — the price is set somewhere else

Irish grain trades against international markets that an individual grower has no influence over. The final return is then shaped by merchant terms, quality deductions, drying charges, storage costs and contracts negotiated one farm at a time. Recent feed wheat, feed barley and malting barley prices show the pressure on grower margins, but the policy problem does not depend on the price in any particular week.

The input side is different. Fertiliser, diesel, seed, sprays, machinery and finance are offered at prices that are immediately visible and largely non-negotiable for the individual grower. The output price is far less transparent.

The grower must therefore make decisions on land, rotation, seed, fertiliser and machinery months before knowing what the crop will return. That imbalance becomes more serious where contracts are altered after production decisions have already been made.

Boortmalt's reduction in malting barley contract tonnage for 2026 illustrates the issue. A grower may have planned the rotation, secured land and committed inputs on the basis of an expected outlet, only for the contracted tonnage available to change.

Few industries would consider a contract secure if one party could substantially reduce committed volumes after the other party had already taken the production risk.

What tillage should get

A rotation-linked area payment

The country says it wants break crops, protein crops, better rotations, winter soil cover, reduced imported feed dependence and improved soil health. Support should pay for those outcomes.

A flat tillage payment rewards the presence of an eligible crop. A rotation-linked payment rewards the management decisions the country is asking the farmer to make. The rate should be scaled within the available eco-scheme and tillage envelopes so that, if the overall pot falls, the payment falls proportionately rather than collapsing entirely.

Eligible actions could include:

• Verified crop rotation.
• Protein and break crops.
• Cover established before winter.
• Reduced bare soil.
• Soil testing.
• Nutrient planning linked to the rotation.

Contract security in law, not goodwill

Where a processor, maltster or merchant contracts a defined volume, a substantial unilateral reduction after the grower has committed land and inputs should require a defined notice period, a written commercial reason, and compensation for eligible committed costs where adequate notice was not given.

The grower cannot walk away after drilling the crop. The buyer should not be able to walk back from the commercial commitment without consequence. This is not a demand for a guaranteed price. It is a demand for enforceable terms.

Market Transparency Reporting

The Agri-Food Regulator should publish anonymised market information on contracted grain prices, spot prices, forward prices, committed volumes, rejection and downgrade rates, drying and handling charges, and payment terms.

The information should be published by crop and month, with enough regional detail to be useful without identifying individual businesses. A grower deciding whether to sell green, store, forward-sell or hold grain should be able to see what the trade actually did in the previous week or month.

A visible price is not a fixed price. It is the minimum information needed for a functioning market.

Recognise straw as a crop in its own right

Straw is a real farm output with a real value. It supplies livestock bedding, mushroom production, energy, soil carbon and organic matter.

The policy question should not be framed as whether baling or chopping is the correct answer in every case. It should ask what the soil, rotation and regional market require. Where soil tests and agronomic conditions justify incorporation, the farmer should be supported for returning organic matter. Where a functioning livestock or industrial market exists, baled straw should be recognised as a legitimate crop output rather than treated as a residue or inconvenience.

The support system should reward the environmental outcome without pretending that every field requires the same treatment.

Protein and native feed as food-security measures

Every additional tonne of Irish-grown protein reduces dependence on imported feed. That is not only an environmental argument. It is a food-security, trade-security and supply-chain argument.

Protein support should therefore be maintained and strengthened through the existing protein, feed-security and eco-scheme envelopes rather than drawing from the coupled-support ceiling already allocated elsewhere in this submission.

Horticulture — the fewest hands, the thinnest price

Ireland has very few commercial growers relative to the importance of fresh food production. They sell highly perishable produce to a concentrated retail and wholesale market, often under commercial terms that are not visible outside the individual negotiation.

Perishability leaves growers with less negotiating power than almost any other primary producer. A finisher may be able to hold cattle for another week or fortnight. A grain grower may be able to store a crop. A grower with vegetables, soft fruit or salad crops ready for harvest may have only days before quality and value begin to fall.

The buyer knows that timetable as well as the grower does. That creates a market in which timing itself becomes bargaining power.

What horticulture should get

Written supply terms before the season

Volume, specification, price mechanism, delivery schedule, contract duration and rejection criteria should be agreed in writing before the production season begins. The contract should specify:

• The product and grade required.
• Agreed or indicative volumes.
• How price will be calculated.
• Notice requirements.
• Permitted reasons for rejection.
• How disputes will be handled.
• When payment will be made.

Rejection standards should not be invented or changed at the gate after the crop has been grown. The Unfair Trading Practices rules should be enforced through the Agri-Food Regulator with penalties large enough to change behaviour rather than becoming another cost of doing business.

Published farm-gate and retail margin data

Ireland should publish regular farm-gate-to-shelf market data for fresh produce. The publication should show, by product where possible, average farm-gate price, wholesale price, retail price, promotional price, rejection or wastage rates, and the distribution of margin through the chain.

Growers are regularly told that retail prices are under pressure. They are rarely shown where the pressure landed. Transparency would not fix every margin problem, but it would establish whether value was genuinely lost from the chain or merely moved within it.

Producer organisations used properly

The EU fruit and vegetable regime supports recognised producer organisations that allow growers to plan production, invest jointly, market together and negotiate with greater scale. Ireland has made limited use of that structure. That is one of the largest practical opportunities available to the sector because it combines collective bargaining with EU co-funding.

The State should provide a dedicated producer-organisation development service to help growers establish eligible organisations, prepare operational programmes, meet governance requirements, apply for EU support, invest jointly in packing, storage and logistics, and market produce collectively.

The purpose is not to replace private businesses with committees. It is to give small growers enough collective scale to negotiate with buyers who already operate nationally and internationally.

Capital support for protected cropping and on-site energy

Glasshouses, polytunnels, refrigeration, washing, grading and packing are energy-intensive businesses. Capital support should reduce the cost base permanently rather than subsidising the same annual bill indefinitely.

A protected-cropping and energy measure should support solar generation, battery storage where justified, heat pumps, efficient boilers and heating systems, heat recovery, thermal screens, insulation, water harvesting, efficient irrigation, and modern packing and cold-storage equipment.

Where private finance can carry part of the investment, public support should be used to unlock it rather than replace it.

Name the labour constraint honestly

Horticulture's binding constraint is often labour rather than land, machinery or capital. A grant for a tunnel or packing line does not solve a shortage of people available to plant, manage and harvest the crop.

CAP cannot by itself reform work permits, seasonal labour rules or housing policy. But an honest CAP submission should still identify the problem and require coordination between the Department of Agriculture and the departments responsible for enterprise, employment and migration.

Capital support should also prioritise practical labour-saving investments where they genuinely reduce repetitive work and increase productivity. The policy should not pretend that automation can replace every worker or that a grant can solve every labour shortage.

What the two sectors share

Set horticulture and tillage side by side and the same three features appear. They buy inputs at prices that are published, rising and difficult for an individual farmer to negotiate. They sell output at prices and contract terms that are often private. And they carry the weather, timing, quality and specification risk between those two transactions.

Every measure in this Part is therefore either a rule change, a redesign or a reallocation. Not one of them spends the coupled-support headroom already allocated in Part I.

That is deliberate. A submission that answers every problem by asking for another pot of money is not a funding plan. The coupled ceiling was spent once. It is not spent again here.

How the books balance

Tillage

Rotation, soil cover and protein measures would be funded through a reallocation of the eco-scheme and existing tillage envelopes. The support would replace or reshape measures inside those pots rather than create a second claim on the same money.

Contract security and grain-market reporting would be regulatory obligations. They would not require a new direct-payment allocation. Straw support would remain inside the available soil, tillage and eco-scheme envelopes and would be offset against measures it replaces.

Horticulture

Producer organisations would draw on existing EU co-funding that Ireland currently uses only to a limited extent. Protected cropping and energy investment would use existing capital-support ceilings, farm solar measures and private investment. Written contracts, margin reporting and Unfair Trading Practices enforcement would rely on the existing regulatory framework and the powers of the Agri-Food Regulator.

Under a smaller CAP envelope, the payment-based measures would shrink with their pots. The regulatory measures would not. That is why transparency becomes relatively more valuable as the budget becomes tighter. It improves the farmer's bargaining position without requiring the State to compensate for every market failure with another payment.

Why this matters beyond farming

A food system is only resilient if the people producing food can remain commercially viable. When growers leave the sector, consumers lose domestic supply and choice. When the tillage area contracts, dependence on imported grain and protein rises. When domestic production falls, exposure to international price shocks, transport disruption and trade uncertainty increases.

Transparency and secure contracts are therefore not simply farming issues. They are food-security measures.

The common thread — transparency, again

Four Parts, several sectors and the same sentence keeps returning: publish the price. Beef, sheep, wool, grain and fresh produce. In every case, the primary producer is expected to plan years ahead against a price that may not be visible next week, while the buyer can see the wider market.

Support can keep a business alive. It cannot create a fair market. Transparent prices and enforceable contracts can. That is why this submission keeps returning to the same place. It is also why IrelandCattlePrice.com exists.