Alarm at the amount of top quality agricultural land being used for hardwood production was expressed at the annual conference of the Agricultural Science Association in Waterford.
Mr Paddy Fitzsimons, president of the Association of Agricultural Consultants, said his members were predicting a substantial increase in forestry on marginal land as a result of the Fischler reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
"But we are alarmed at the amount of top-quality agricultural land being used for hardwood production, as the current temporary over-supply of food within the EU may not last and a swing back to agricultural production could be hindered," he said.
Mr Fitzsimons, whose members work in the private sector, said there was general agreement that commercial farms will decrease in number but increase in size. When regulations are removed, the scale of commercial enterprises will increase dramatically.
Mr Fitzsimon's members are predicting that vast areas of the countryside will be owned and farmed by people who have made a lifestyle choice to live there, but do not expect to make their principle income from farming.
"These farmers will live in a symbiotic relationship with the commercial farmers, whose scale and complexity will be unrecognisable from what it is now," he said.
Twenty-five years ago there were only half a dozen agricultural consultants in the country compared to now, where there are more than 100 firms employing several hundred professionals.
It appeared likely that the State would withdraw from providing services directly to farmers and would operate these in line with other areas of the public service, such as Education, Health, Environment and Transport, where relevant Departments had decided what services it wanted delivered and then contracted the delivery of those services to the private sector.
One of Ireland's largest farmers, Mr Jim McCarthy from Carlow, told the 250 delegates he believed that following the most recent CAP reforms, farming would become more commercially driven.
"In the past there has been an unwillingness in farming to pay for good advice. There are two reasons for this, firstly the advice has often been poor and there is the lack of appreciation of the critical importance of good advice to the success of the business," he said.
He predicted that the role of Teagasc in advising commercial farmers would continue to decline and would be replaced by private consultancy.
"Teagasc's dilemma is that it is very difficult to be all things to all men. As Lord Macaulay put it: 'The business of everybody is the business of nobody'," he said.