The manner in which EU subsidies are paid to farmers would be reformed if Labour entered government, the party has said.
New conditions for qualifying for the payments, which are the major source of income for many farmers, would be introduced in an attempt to improve the quality of farm produce. The level of payments made would be "contingent on environmental and animal welfare criteria".
In Kilkenny to present the party's agriculture manifesto, 'Towards a Living Land', Labour's agriculture spokesman, Mr Willie Penrose, said it was committed to ensuring that employment and incomes in agriculture were protected.
However, he said, the system of paying EU farm supports had to be restructured. "Under the current system, supports are centred around high yields. This discriminates heavily in favour of larger farmers and there are no criteria attached to the quality of production and environmental impact.
"The Labour Party favours an area-based system, whereby supports would be targeted at farmers on the basis of the size of their holdings. Apart from targeting those farmers most in need, this payment structure would encourage more environmental farming methods because it is not focused on high yields," he said.
"Labour supports a policy which links the direct payments to the resources used in the farming activities and the quality of the product produced."
He added that the administration of EU payments by the Department of Agriculture had been the subject of criticism because of the rigidity of procedures and, in some cases, delays in delivering payments. As a result, Labour was advocating an independent payments agency which would be answerable to the Minister for Agriculture.
Labour's manifesto has also proposed removing responsibility for food and food safety from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. A review of the operations of Teagasc, the farm advisory service, is also recommended.
Mr Penrose said the value of women's work in the rural economy as well as the particular childcare needs of rural families would also be addressed by Labour in government.