Almost 60 per cent of farmers earned less than £10,000 from farming last year, according to the National Farm Survey published yesterday. However, many of these farmers had other sources of income.
Average farm income was up by 27 per cent on 1999 to £11,500.
The figures published by Teagasc, the agriculture and food development agency, represent 124,000 farmers.
The survey is based on an analysis of accounts on a representative sample of 1,100 farms and provides income details on a range of farm sizes and systems.
Last year's income rise followed a drop of 19 per cent since 1995.
Just under 40 per cent of farmers (47,000) had an income from farming of more than £10,000 in 2000. Some 11,000 had incomes in excess of £30,000 and a further 11,000 earned between £20,000 and £30,000.
Over 70 per cent of farmers with incomes in excess of £20,000 were in dairy farming.
Teagasc said: "While almost 50,000 farmers had an income from farming of less than £5,000, the vast bulk of these had other sources of income in the form of an off-farm job, social welfare or pension."
There were an estimated 37,000 full-time farms where the farmer had no other job. The average income on these farms in 2000 was £22,600, an increase of just over 20 per cent on the previous year.
On 45 per cent of all farms, the farmer and/or his or her spouse had an off-farm job. Farmers with other employment were predominantly cattle and sheep farmers.
While direct payments, such as payments under the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, increased by 16 per cent last year, their overall contribution to farm income was down.
Meanwhile, tillage overtook dairy farming as the highest income-earner last year.
New investment in farming increased for the first time since 1997. It went up from £313 million in 1999 to £418 million.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Tom Parlon, said all indications were that national farm income would decline in 2001. The data on farm income showed much more year-to-year volatility than the official CSO farm income figures, he said.
Average farm income was only 63.5 per cent of average industrial earnings in Ireland.