A senior official with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), has provided a forecast of organic sheep farming in Ireland.
Senior inspector in organics with the DAFM, Jack Nolan has said the area farmed organically in Ireland has increased from 1.6% in 2020 to 5% following the addition of approximately 1,000 more farmers into the latest tranche of the Organic Farming Scheme (OFS).
By 2027, the government has a target of having 7.5% of the available agricultural area farmed under organically, stretching to 10% by 2030 as set out under the Climate Action Plan (CAP).
Nolan recently told a Teagasc webinar that as of 2023, approximately 175,000ha were dedicated to organics.
With 1,000 new entrants entering the conversion phase this spring, the land area under organics has increased to 225,000ha.
The DAFM official stated that there were a total of 1,503 farmers in organic sheep production in 2023. As of this year, 66,857 ewes were certified as being organic.
However, through the addition of farmers to the organic farming scheme in 2023, it is expected that an additional 75,170 ewes will be certified organic after their two year conversion process is completed by 2025.
A further 41,340 ewes are expected to transition from conventional to being organically certified by 2026, when the ewes present on latest entrants farms to the OFS are considered.
Nolan said this means that if farmers have already converted and those in the conversion process retain ewe numbers as is, the total number of organically certified ewes will rise to 183,367 by 2026 – an “almost trebling”, leading to a significant increase in the number of organic lambs available in 2026.
With additional numbers expected to come on stream and some organic lamb entering conventional systems and missing premium prices, Nolan said: “We want to reduce that as much as possible to reduce this leakage.”