A total of 37,000 farm households urgently need support to survive because they earn less than the statutory minimum wage for agricultural workers of £156 a week, and have no other source of income, it has been claimed. Dr Jim Phelan, head of the department of agribusiness, extension and rural development at University College Dublin, also said that 14,000 farm households were earning less than they would obtain on social welfare and 27,000 were in poverty.
In a survey, commissioned by the Irish Farmers' Association, Dr Phelan said that there were 14,000 farmers who would have to quit the land and join the 3,000 farmers a year leaving agriculture.
He used the Household Budget Survey of 1994/1995, the annual Teagasc National Farm Survey, and occasional reports and studies to establish the facts in his survey.
He had found that 70,000 farmers were earning less than the statutory minimum wage for agricultural employees. Of these 60 per cent were married, 74 per cent were deemed demographically viable and the average household size was 3.42. "In 60 per cent of these households, the farmer has no off-farm job, that is 42,000 households. In 53 per cent of the households, neither the operator nor the spouse had any off-farm job, making a total of 37,000 households," he said.
Dr Phelan said that cattle farmers were hardest hit and many of them would go out of business without aid. The 37,000 farmers were on farms varying in size from 50 to well over 100 acres and represented "the middle ground" in farming.
"If they do not get help, then the whole character of rural Ireland will change because through their activities, they invest a lot of what they earn back into the community," he said.
"If the crisis continues, we will lose what I would call these `real farmers' and they will join the 3,000 plus who are leaving the land annually," he said.
Dr Phelan said there were 14,000 farmers who would be forced to leave the land at any rate because their holdings were not viable but there was a future for the 37,000 others who could stay farming if they received support.
The Irish Farmers' Association president, Mr Tom Parlon, said that the distribution of EU funding was decided in Brussels and that was one of the difficulties with it.
"I welcome this study because it shows we are not all fat cats and there is an endemic low-income problem on Irish farms which will have to be addressed," he said.
The IFA, he said, was seeking either an extension of the Family Income Supplement Scheme or a major reform of the inadequate Small Holders' Assistance Scheme, commonly known as the "farmers' dole".
He said the Government should put a safety-net scheme of £30 million per year into the Budget to help these farmers survive. Such a scheme should be means tested.