Soaring food bills are being blamed on farmers as farm-gate prices rose by almost a fifth in the past 12 months - while their costs are up by less than one per cent, writes Sarah Slater.

However, the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) said grocery price hikes are not down to them and are due to the EU reducing the amount of food that can be produced.

Latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show that the most significant price increases hit cattle, which are up almost 44 per cent, while milk rose by 12 per cent.

But the cost of production for farmers has risen in areas such as fertiliser, which shot up by 10 per cent, and veterinary expenses, up by almost five per cent.

The recent grocery price analysis by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) sees two reasons why food prices are going up.

It reiterates the IFA's belief that Ireland is an expensive place due to higher wages, geographic location and higher costs in construction, legal services and insurance.

The other reason is that food producers, such as farmers, are increasing their margins.

Tadhg Buckley of the IFA refuted the idea that farmers were to blame for the hike.

He said: "There is a lot of discussion on how food prices have increased over the past three years. The price of groceries in Ireland had grown by 27 per cent, which is below the EU average of 35 per cent. The crucial thing is we are the only country in the EU where the price of food did not increase between 2008 and 2023.

"Now we saw agricultural input prices increase substantially during the 2021-to2023 period as well. What is driving the output price up is the lack of supply of agricultural produce across the EU."

For example, the number of cattle in Ireland has dropped 218,000 in the period from 2023 to December 2024, according to CSO figures.

Buckley said: "Farmers can't push up prices as they are at the bottom of the food chain. So if we are producing less, the price goes up. The output and input indices don't always move in tandem. In Ireland we are seeing a significant increase in prices, so we have seen static food prices over the past 15 years and now they are going up quite quickly over a short period of time.

"It's been going up everywhere [in Europe] but they [other countries] didn't get the same drop as we did [over that period of 15 years]. Farmers are not making a killing on price rises."

He explained that the core cause of this is EU policy as it reduced agricultural output across all European countries and "we are now seeing the price of it". He added: 'They [the EU] have stopped incentivising [production] and they have brought in an increased level of regulation, which has curtailed production and now it's gone too far the other way and we are paying the price of it with less supply. It's classic supply and demand.'

IFA president Francie Gorman pointed out that farmers are 'price takers'. He said: 'Wider society needs to wake up to the importance of food security. Young people are not returning to farming and people are beginning to see the effects of falling output.'

Michael Kilcoyne of the Consumers' Association of Ireland asked what the office of agri-food regulator An Rialálaí Agraibhia was doing to about the situation.

He said: "Either somebody is making a lot of money or somebody has got it wrong, it's one or the other. The food regulator was set up a couple of years ago, An Rialálaí Agraibhia, but there's nothing from him at all.

"It's time that office clarified exactly what they're finding and have they started looking, have they started examining this, because this is a very serious issue." The office of An Rialálaí Agraibhia and the CCPC were contacted for comment.

(Pic: Getty Images)