“Obviously our first thoughts are with the people of the Ukraine, but we have to recognise that food security is now a much bigger political priority,” he said.
“On Sunday, we had the Minister calling for a ‘wartime effort’ to produce more food. Then on Monday, we had his officials telling us they were considering quotas on production. It is not consistent,” he said.
“There is no point creating further stress around quotas when our farmers on the ground are struggling to get key inputs for their farms.”
Last week, EU Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski raised the need to reconsider the Farm to Fork Strategy due to the war in Ukraine.
“The responsible thing to do now is to suspend the Food Vision Dairy Group until we have some degree of certainty,” he said.
“The Department and all actors in the sector need to focus on assisting farmers during the current crisis,” concluded Stephen Arthur.