Irish beef exports will require EU supports post-Brexit, according to leading agri-food economist and former chairman of Meat Industry Ireland (MII) Ciaran Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n
Fitzgerald detailed the difficult position Ireland finds itself in, in terms of its beef exports, as a result of Brexit.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the premiere episode of FarmLand<\/em>, he said: “Obviously, there’s a huge difficulty in terms of looking at alternative markets. I mean there are obvious markets.<\/p>\n When you look at where we currently export, there is 250,000t that goes to the UK. There is about another 200,000t that goes to the rest of Europe and then there is about 50,000t that goes worldwide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “If you go back 20 years ago, we would have exported an awful lot of beef to north Africa and the Middle East. There are markets that will take beef, but the real issue is at what price will that return.<\/p>\n “To be honest with you, what’s really needed is a transitional arrangement above and beyond<\/strong> the EU\/UK exit strategy,” he said.<\/p>\n The leading agri-food economist outlined that there needs to be a “market transitional arrangement” that looks at the way the Brexit situation is evolving.<\/p>\n Continuing, he added: “There needs to be EU supports<\/strong> put in place that deal with orderly marketing that creates a situation where – over a five to 10-year period, if the UK is now going to be a market that returns way less than it did consistently – you are given time to find new markets.<\/p>\n Other than dumping product, you cannot find new markets in two or three years of a scale we’re talking about here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “From a European perspective, they don’t want the rest of the EU – which is a surplus beef area – to have to absorb 200,000t of Irish beef<\/strong>; that will bring down the price of beef right across Europe. Nobody in Europe really wants that,” he said.<\/p>\nFinding new markets<\/h2>\n