A radical refocus of Teagasc, which will see an end to the county agriculture officer system and a move to a specialised advisory system for Ireland's commercial farmers, has been announced.
Mr Jim Flanagan, director of the agriculture and food development authority, told the Agricultural Science Association conference in Waterford that the move was needed to meet the challenges of post-Common Agricultural Policy reform markets. It was important that commercial farmers, as producers of the raw material for the food industry, would compete with the best.
"I see a need to free specialised enterprise advisers, say in dairy, drystock, tillage and pigs, from the scheme to deliver a dedicated technology and business advisory programme," he said.
"Such a programme would include technical discussion groups, adult training, monitor farms, profit monitor, cost control planner and other financial tools, public events and focused farm visits, and one-to-one consultancy both office- and farm- based," he said.
Mr Flanagan said such a programme would be strongly influenced by farmer/industry programme commodity groups which would advise on, review, monitor and evaluate the programmes on an ongoing basis.
Farmers who want this more specialised advisory service would have to pay a greater proportion of the cost.
Such a willingness by farmers to pay more, if not all of the cost of a dedicated service, had already been demonstrated in a scheme which was set up in the west of Ireland recently.
Mr Flanagan, who heads the 1,500-strong Teagasc organisation, which has about 500 advisers, said this service would be reorganised from its current county bases, run by chief agricultural officers, to 18 management-based units, each headed by an area manager rather than a county agriculture officer.
The new management units would be more equal in size and services provided than those provided by the old county units.
A typical example of this reorganisation would see the merging of counties Meath, Dublin and Louth into one area to be managed by an area manager.
Mr Flanagan also announced that following the successful pilot e-learning delivery of some courses last year, Teagasc would set up an e-college this autumn.
It would be an alternative means of delivering its various courses for which an obvious demand had been established.
He said the roles of colleges run by Teagasc would have to change as more students were now inclined to commute from home for their training. In future, there would be greater emphasis on adult and part-time farmer training.
He predicted an increase in the 2-3 per cent annual decline in the number of farmers. However, Teagasc would continue to justify its existence and compete for its share of Exchequer funding with other sectors, even though the Government had clearly signalled that it saw Teagasc becoming a somewhat smaller organisation.
Innovation and change and increased research and development was even more necessary in the future, he said.
Teagasc is convinced that the services it provides for the food industry are important and should continue.
In the context of developing an internationally traded consultancy Teagasc would be quite prepared to engage with any developments, if research recommended that this was a good way forward.