TILLAGE FARMERS are showing interest in growing sugar beet again, with nearly 2,000 former growers, contractors and factory workers attending a series of meetings in recent weeks.
Although Irish farmers are not allowed to produce sugar under European Union rules, even for export outside the EU, the new campaign to re-establish the industry is gaining momentum.
It is argued that farmers involved in grain production can use beet as a rotation crop as it greatly increases yields from cereals in the rotation cycle.
Willie French, a former sugarbeet grower from the southeast who chaired the meetings, said 450 people attended a meeting in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, 10 days ago. A week before that 400 people turned up to a meeting in Mallow, Co Cork, and over 900 people attended a meeting at Kilkenny mart last week.
This meeting took place two days after it appeared a setback had been delivered to the movement at the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture when the controversy about Greencore and the closure of sugar factories was discussed.
The secretary general of the Department of Agriculture, Tom Moran, told the committee there had been misinformation about the possibility of Ireland being able to produce sugar again under EU rules.
Ireland, he said, could not produce sugar without a quota which is vested in the EU, not even for export outside the union. However, he said sugar beet could be grown for energy production like ethanol.
But this was an option Greencore, which ran the industry here, had refused to pursue in 2006 when asked by the government.
Mr Moran was supportive of a proposal that a feasibility study be carried out involving a number of departments and agencies into the possibility of growing the crop to produce ethanol.
Mr French, a former chairman of the IFA’s sugar beet growers’ group, said Mr Moran’s statement was a setback for the movement but it would not stop it.
“All accurate information is important and here was a clear statement of fact. What is more important is the commitment to support a feasibility study into the future use of the crop,” he said.
“We would like to see what that report throws up, but the bottom line is we cannot have movement without Government support for an ethanol industry,” he said.
No further public meetings have been planned, but Mr French with others will travel to Brussels later this month to meet officials there to progress the issue.
The other driving force behind the movement to put sugar beet back into Irish fields is the Irish Biofuels Initiative – a group of scientists, businessmen and supporters whose aim is to promote indigenous, economic sustainable food and biofuel production through the optimisation of land use.
The group was established at the instigation of AJ Navratil, a Cork-based scientist, as a private enterprise think tank to re-establish the sugar beet industry.
The group believes that enough ethanol could be produced here to produce the equivalent of 12.5 per cent of Ireland’s petrol usage.
While the argument over Greencore’s decision to end 80 years of sugar production still rages, beet growing – both sugar and fodder beet for animal feed – still takes place.
According to Mr French, a substantial number of Irish tillage farmers are growing mainly fodder beet and are making money from it.
“Some of them tell me they are getting over €35 per tonne and at that it is profitable for them and it is keeping the culture and skills of growing the crop alive,” Mr French said.