Farmers were warned yesterday by the Minister for Agriculture and Food and a top EU environmental chief that they could stand to lose their EU single payment if they breached environmental, food safety or animal welfare standards.
Addressing delegates at the Agricultural Science Association conference in Waterford, Mr Walsh said society now demanded more than a supply of quality affordable food from farmers.
"It has certain expectations in terms of landscape, biodiversity, recreation and leisure. There are real costs for farmers in meeting these expectations," he said.
"This is the basis for the agri-environmental measures which have been available to member-states since the CAP reforms of 1992."
Apart from supporting rural sustainable development, the Minister said such measures also provided "the justification for the payment of the single farm payment which will be subject to cross-compliance with environmental, food safety and animal welfare standards."
Mr Michael Hamell, a senior figure in the EU Environment Commission, said linking respect for the environment to the payment to farmers was the original basis on which cross-compliance was established in the CAP reform.
He said cross-compliance was based on the logic that society expected farmers to respect the environment rather than making it a burden for society.
Mr Hamell said farmers who failed to respect environmental regulations could face reduced or cancelled direct payments.
On Ireland's decision to seek a derogation from the nitrates directive to allow a higher use of nitrogen than the 170 kg per hectare, Mr Hamell advised the delegates that such derogations were not easily achieved.
To date, he said, only Denmark had achieved such a derogation which applied only to individual farmers with more than 70 per cent of their land under crops, and a long growing season.
He noted that Denmark's derogation covered approximately 5 per cent of all land and reminded delegates that it had cut nitrogen use by 50 per cent over the last 15 years.
Mr Hugh Friel, chief executive of the Kerry Group, said Ireland could maintain its competitive advantage in the European dairy industry but that it must lead the technical developments of functional foods, nutritional foods and beverages and dairy ingredients with specific health benefits.
Mr Friel said local industry should begin to develop speciality dairy products and achieve technical advances at dairy farm level with the use of genetic improvements in stock.