The director of Teagasc has welcomed the recovery in farm incomes across all sectors for 2024, and offered a hopeful, though cautious, outlook for incomes in 2025.

Speaking to Agriland at the launch of the Teagasc National Farm Survey for 2024, Prof. Frank O'Mara said the turnaround in farm incomes was a positive compared to the difficult year for farm incomes in 2023.

"It's very welcome to see the recovery in farm incomes in 2024, well up on the previous year 2023. But of course, you have to look back back at 2023 and remember that was a very, very poor year for farm incomes. We had very poor weather, we had very high input prices," he said.

Prof. O'Mara explained that prices recovered in 2024, especially toward the latter end of the year. As well as that, input prices were down compared to the previous year. The weather also picked up, which he said was favourable for incomes.

"After a bad start to the weather in 2024 - it was pretty bad we remember - it recovered well in the second half of the year," he said.

"We had very good weather for the harvest, and we had very good weather for grazing for the backend of the year and for getting winter crop sown. All of that combined to make 2024 a year of recovery, in particular on the dairy and drystock sectors," the Teagasc director added.

However, he said the incomes figure for tillage farms, while a recovery compared to the previous year, still leaves the sector squeezed when one looks at the level of investment required by tillage farms.

"While tillage incomes recovered and the harvest was much better than expected, tillage incomes are still quite low in relation to what you would need really to run a tillage farm in terms of the amount of investment that's required in machinery and the inputs going into a tillage enterprise," Prof. O'Mara said.

Looking ahead to 2025, the Teagasc director said that the year to date has been good in terms of weather.

"We've had a very good spring. Most crops got in in very good condition. Now, we had very dry weather during May there, which wasn't so good for late planted crops. But basically weather has been favourable, in particular for grassland farms," he said.

Prices of commodities are also in a relatively good place at he moment, although a fuller picture is still needed on the tillage sector.

"The prices are very good compared to this time last year across most of the livestock products, beef, sheep and dairy. We don't know yet around tillage," he said.

"With most of the indicators we have, things would be looking good for 2025 so far, but I would caution we are only halfway through the year and we don't know what the rest of year will bring yet," Prof. O'Mara added.