Diana Armstrong Challenges Agriculture Minister Over Herd Warning
Mrs Armstrong raised the issue in the Assembly after an interview with the Belfast Telegraph. She said the minister had also stated that 90% of farmers were acting properly, before warning that Northern Ireland had too large a herd if opposition to his approach continued. The Fermanagh and South Tyrone representative is the Ulster Unionist Party’s deputy leader and agriculture spokesperson.
She questioned why the wider farming industry should bear the consequences if the phosphorus problem was concentrated among a relatively small group. “If the problem is 7%, why is the warning pointed at everybody’s stock?” she asked. Mrs Armstrong said that telling farmers to work with the department or face herd reductions did not constitute partnership, and that the farmers responsible for the reported share of phosphorus would not be the only ones affected.
Mrs Armstrong subsequently asked whether “degrowth”—a reduction in agricultural production—was now an Alliance Party policy. She said the minister had rejected a buyout programme intended to lower herd numbers, but argued that a series of separate policy decisions could nonetheless make it difficult for family farms to continue. “You can do it slowly,” she said, until a family farm no longer offered a viable route for the next generation.
She said farmers supported efforts to improve water quality but opposed treating agriculture as the sole source of the problem. “Farmers want clean water,” she said, adding that the minister’s own figures showed the issue was not attributable to the whole sector. Mrs Armstrong also criticised the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs for what she described as insufficient financial assistance for farmers investing in their businesses. Referring to 2025, she said the department had provided no farm capital-investment funding during that year.
“He is right that 90% are doing the right thing. So where is the support for those people?” Mrs Armstrong asked. She said that being left alone by the department was not equivalent to receiving its backing. She also disputed the minister’s comparison between Northern Ireland and the Netherlands, saying that their farming structures differed significantly and that policy should take account of local conditions.
According to Mrs Armstrong, Northern Ireland has 25,834 farms, with nearly four-fifths classed as very small. She said four out of five people working on the land were farmers, their partners or spouses, describing this as family farming rather than Dutch-style agri-industry. She warned that reducing domestic food production could increase reliance on imports without lowering global food output or its environmental effects. Removing farmland from production in Northern Ireland, she said, could shift production to countries with different environmental standards, including through beef imports linked to rainforest clearance.
