Irish farmers milk success amid economic fallout

Paul Hannan milks 150 dairy cows twice a day year round and says he loves the work. / Stephen Starr for USA TODAY

LIMERICK, Ireland - Over the past two years, Darragh Vaughan, 34, from Kilbane, Co. Clare, has grown his cattle herd from scratch to nearly 400 after he took up farming in 2011.

I have been constantly expanding and the plan is to grow the herd further next year,' he said.

Vaughan is one of many Irish residents who are returning to the land these days in search of opportunities after Ireland's economy nearly collapsed - and like many, his endeavor has turned into a success.

As the economic fallout from an overheated housing market caused unemployment to rocket from 4% to 15%, turned banks insolvent and forced the country to take on a deeply unpopular $115 billion bailout from international creditors, one industry prospered: farming.

'It's seen as a very exciting sector,' Ireland's minister of agriculture Simon Coveney told USA TODAY. 'When a country goes through a very dramatic transformation, people look at industries they can believe in.'

Coveney says that since taking up his post more than two years ago, Ireland's agriculture export value has risen from $11 billion to almost $14 billion.

Meanwhile, beef farmers saw incomes soar 30% this year while dairy farmer profits rose 15% on the back of strong international demand. Ireland's agri-food sector employs almost 10% of the country's workforce.

Besides domestic demand, international markets are also helping fuel the sector's growth.

Earlier this month, Japan announced the end to a 13-year embargo on Irish beef, worth $20 million a year to Irish farmers. In August, Libya opened its doors to Irish live cattle and sheep following a 17-year embargo.

And China's booming middle class has for the first time begun eating dairy products. Until about 10 years ago, most Chinese could not afford dairy products, a staple in the West that was virtually absent from traditional East Asian diets. But the rise of the middle class - including working and high-earning mothers - spurred a growing demand for such products, considered exotic and a mark of status.

'There's also been a growing demand for the type of foods Ireland produces - protein foods, dairy product and meat on the back of a grass-based system,' Coveney added.

Coveney said that during the so-called 'Celtic Tiger' period of economic growth from 1995 to 2008, many farmers' sons looked for work in the better-paying construction industry. But after the sector collapsed in 2009, many turned back to agriculture.

These days, university agri-food courses cannot keep up with demand from young applicants. Nine out of 10 farmers surveyed in a recent Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association poll said they would still choose farming as a career if they had to start over again.

However, farming in Ireland remains an often-precarious business, highly dependent on weather conditions that change from day to day.

Above-average rainfall and unusually cold weather last spring forced farmers to import thousands of tons of feed from neighboring England as supplies ran out, costing them millions of dollars. The Irish government committed $2.7 million to farmers to support the relief effort. Seven farmer suicides in a community in western Ireland last summer were linked to the feed crisis.

Dairy farmer Paul Hannan, 45, from Ballyneety, Co. Limerick, says subsidies from the European Union are worth about $41,000 per acre per year to his farm of 700 acres, crucial to his business when adverse weather strikes.

'In 2009, we were broke, the weather was awful - every time I turned on the milking parlor I lost money and we got no support from the government,' he said.

Today, Coveney said dairy farmers are looking at expansion because in April 2015 the EU-wide dairy quota regime - which regulates how much a country in the bloc can produce and what price is received - is set to be abolished.

Meanwhile, Hannan, who milks 150 dairy cows twice a day year-round, says he loves the work and remains positive about the future of dairy farming in Ireland because of buoyant world markets for milk, cheese and other products. But in order to grow, he says, he can't carry any under-performing animals.

'Like any job, you have to be ruthless, and that's how you keep going.'

Read the original story: Irish farmers milk success amid economic fallout

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