NBA Urges Politicians To Opt For Suckler Payments
NORTHERN IRELAND - Politicians must seize the opportunity to secure the suckler cow industry by accepting a new European coupled payment for calf production.
1 April 2013
1 minute read
The National Beef Association (NBA) has urged european politicians representing national interests to be aware of the great possibilities presented by a poossible 12 per cent of Single Farm Payment paid out to safeguard suckler beef production.
This arises from recent Common Agricultural Policy reform talks that have been on-going in Europe.
“An opportunity exists for a timely and important investment in the beef cow whose calves are the bedrock on which a £1 billion a year, cross-Province, beef processing and distribution industry is built,” explained the NBA’s Northern Ireland chairman, Oisin Murnion.
“If this strategy, which could mean a payment in the region of £132 a head can be very quickly directed at the increasingly vulnerable suckler cow or her calf, is approved in Brussels and then Belfast it would help boost Northern Ireland’s wider economy and generate many other structural advantages for the Province too.”
The NBA has called for support from farmers saying that lobbying for suckler herd payments would breathe financial 'oxygen' into struggling rural communities.
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