Ireland: Organic lamb numbers set to triple

Jack Nolan, senior inspector with the Department of Agriculture, told a recent Teagasc webinar that Ireland will have 180,000 fully organic breeding ewes by 2026, with triple the number of organic lambs.

“Factories have not been interested without the supply, they have said previously, but now there will be the supply,” he said.

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“There is leakage. Not all the lambs that are organic will end up in the organic chain or sold as a premium. We want to reduce that leakage. As we get more and more lambs available you’d imagine that more processors would become interested. And we need more finishers.

“Sometimes it’s just a matter of an organic farmer selling in the local mart and that’s handier than bringing them to an organic sale.”Mr Nolan also pointed to the opportunities that a guaranteed supply of organic lamb can provide processors to seek new markets.

He said that more organic lamb finishers were required — particularly in the east of the country — to ensure lambs produced in the west are not lost to conventional farming systems. Two-thirds of the country’s organic farmers are in the west, he said.