The State's 140,000 farmers received public support of over £11,000 per farm last year, including £1 billion in cheques-in-the-post, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Mr Walsh, said yesterday.
The Minister, announcing details of the "Annual Review and Outlook, 2000/2001", said that total public expenditure on the agri-food area came to £2,046 million.
Over half the expenditure in 2000, he said, more than £1 billion, was on direct payments to farms and a further £570 million was on market operations which support farm incomes. "These two items alone amount to public support of well over £11,000 per farm in the past year," he said.
Mr Walsh added that last year was a good year for farm incomes, which was very welcome after three difficult years. Income per person employed in agriculture rose by 14 per cent and output value increased.
He said that aggregate farm income, at £1,843 million, had increased by 7 per cent due to higher prices for most commodities.
The Minister said that direct payments to farmers had risen considerably from just over 20 per cent of income in 1992 to last year's level of 56 per cent, £1.033 billion.
Farm incomes on drystock cattle and sheep farms, he said, were much lower than on dairy or tillage farms, which were heavily dependent on direct payments.
However, he said, the holder or spouse on such farms was much more likely to have off-farm income.
He said ESRI research had shown in 1998 that farm households have a substantially lower risk of consistent poverty than urban and non-farm rural households.
This research showed that farm households had a 4.8 per cent risk of consistent poverty compared with 8.2 per cent of urban households and 8.1 per cent of non-farm rural households. Mr Tom Parlon, the Irish Farmers' Association president, said that the claim by Mr Walsh that the average farm income per person had increased by 14 per cent in 2000 could only be based on an admission by the Minister that the number of farmers had declined by about seven per cent.