Agriculture still accounted for 33 per cent of net foreign earnings notwithstanding the Celtic Tiger, the director of Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, said yesterday.
Dr Liam Downey said agriculture still remained the single biggest contributor to net foreign earnings according to statistics provided by Teagasc economists.
"The very low import content of agriculture and food exports, together with the substantial increase in direct payments from the EU, are the main reasons for this huge contribution to net earnings.
"The average import content of agriculture and food exports is 16 per cent compared to 35 per cent for manufacturing industries. In addition, there is a significant repatriation of profits by foreign-owned export businesses."
Dr Downey, who was speaking at the presentation of the Agricultural Student of the Year Awards, said the figures showed that agriculture still made a huge contribution to the economic wealth of the State and this would remain so.
He said that the number of farmers would continue to decline and recent projections had shown that by 2015 there would be around 70,000 families involved seriously in farming.
"Around 25,000 of these will be involved in full-time commercial farming, the majority of them in dairying. The balance will be part-time farmers but with a significant portion of their income coming from farming."
He said that how the next generation of farmers managed 10 million acres of farmland would dictated, to a large degree, the competitiveness of the agricultural industry and the future viability of rural Ireland.
In a reference to the falling number of young people entering agricultural colleges, the director said that there was a danger of becoming obsessed with counting the numbers and ignoring the quality of training.
Declining birth rates over the past 15 years, the impact of the "tiger economy" over the past five years, the continuing decline in farm numbers and the changing structure of farming meant that a decline was inevitable.
Making the presentations, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, said there was a growing school of thought that the time was now right to see if agricultural education should be revamped to meet the challenges ahead.
"The next 25 years will be totally different to the last 25 years and we need to examine the education and training system in that context. Accordingly, I am proposing that a task force be set up to undertake a review of the system."
The overall award was won by Mr Michael Gowing (21), of Kilminchy, Portlaoise, Co Laois, who runs an intensive dairy and beef farm with his parents. He turned down a university place for a career in farming.