FCI Contractor Charges Guide lifts a modest 5% as costs continue to soar

In publishing the FCI Contracting Charges Guide for 2025 the Association of Farm & Forestry Contractors in Ireland (FCI) is satisfied that this averaged price guide continues to provide fair and reasonable guidance for both Farm & Forestry Contractors and their client farmers. However, it must be emphasised that this is only an information guide. 

FCI has produced these guide figures on an annual basis by collating an average figure for each operation from a panel of FCI Contractor Members from across Ireland.

Because of the local differences the actual guide charge may vary between regions, across soil types, distance travelled, size of contract undertaken, size and type of equipment used as well as the scale of the work done. For these reasons there are bands in each segment of the guide.

This year again sees the 2025 FCI Contracting Charges Guide feature excluding and including VAT columns as an increasing number of farmers are moving towards VAT registration, especially those that have moved to limited company status. 

This 2025 charges guide reflects slight increases, with some charges up by a maximum of 5%, while other charges are shown as virtually unchanged. This year’s 2025 FCI Contracting Charges Guide now lists 98 services of work up that are provided by Agricultural and Forestry Contractors in Ireland in 2025. 

It is now acknowledged that Farm & Forestry Contractor service providers are the most tax efficient, economical, safe, and reliable choice for the delivery of machinery services on the majority of farms. This is reflected in the continuing increases in spend among Irish farmers on contractor services. 

The latest figures from the Teagasc National Farm Survey for 2023 showed that the average amount spent on contractor services by Irish farmers increased to €7,340 per farm in 2023, up from €4,162 in 2015, This significant spend increase has come at a period of high machinery cost inflation and at a time of other cost increase on farms.

Despite this, the cost of contracting services to Irish farms remains at a very competitive 14% of total direct costs, according to the Teagasc data. This data also indicates that in 2023, Irish farmers spent more than €950 million on agricultural contractors services.

Irish farmers spent a significantly higher amount on machinery operational and depreciation costs, according to the Teagasc figures. These combined overhead costs across all farms in the Teagasc survey was double the contractor costs and accounted for 37% of overheads costs on farms. This confirms the value that Irish agricultural contractors provide to their client farmers.

The increasing costs of new machinery for Farm & Forestry Contractors continues to impact on the sustainability of many Irish agricultural contracting businesses.

“Our sector has experienced continuing machinery cost inflation into 2025, while the increase in the costs of machinery spare parts prices remains on an upward trajectory,” according to FCI National Chair, John Hughes. 

“Contractors also have new and additional costs in 2025, with the combination of the minimum wage increase impact along with the new legal requirements around the provision of pension funding for employees due in September 2025. These are additional increased costs that all agricultural and forestry contractors have to factor into their 2025 operational costs,” said John. 

Fuel price uncertainty remains an issue for agricultural and forestry contractors, and it demands a level of flexibility and understanding from farmer clients at a time of unstable world supplies. While fuel prices have risen slightly as we start into 2025 against a background where they stabilised during much of 2024, there are no guarantees that world affairs will not bring about new increases, when the sector has no other fuel or power supply options.

Additional national Government increased fuel taxes in the form of a further Carbon Tax increase in May 2025, will mean a further increase in fuel costs of up to 12 cent per litre, before VAT, during the 2025 season.

There is a noticeable scarcity of young people joining the agricultural and forestry contractor sector. “Our sector demands higher levels of skills as we transition to greater use of technology to increase output and timeliness of work with lower numbers of operators,” said John Hughes.

“Our agricultural and forestry contractor sector is now a technology sector that uses modern machines in the field and in the forests to achieve high output and cost-effective results, with a level of traceable digital foot-printing that was unknown 20 years ago. FCI is seeking the implementation of a training and registration programme for the sector to provide long-term structured technology training for tractor and machinery operators for the sector,” he added.

“Profitability remains elusive to many agricultural contractor businesses in 2025, as they struggle to reconcile higher machinery, finance and labour availability with their ambition to deliver Irish farmers a highly skilled and professional service to their farmer clients,” said John Hughes, FCI National Chair.

“For 2025, our sector remains committed to provide our farmer clients with cost-effective and sustainable machinery services. Our Contractor Charges Guide 2025 provides a guide to only modest increases as our members must achieve in order to deliver on that commitment,” he added.