North farmers have to contend with price cuts - and an unsympathetic government

If the plight of the South's farmers in the face of proposed EU farm reform has evoked some sympathy, spare a thought for their Northern brethren.

In four years farm income in Northern Ireland has fallen about 75 per cent - from £333 million in 1995 to £82 million last year - according to the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) vice-president, Mr Douglas Rowe, who is part of an anxious Northern delegation in Brussels to monitor the talks.

Some 30,000 full-time and part-time farmers still live on the land, but in the last 18 months their numbers have been falling sharply. About 70 per cent of farmers are living below the poverty line, the union says.

And while the Irish Government and the South's farm organisations are seen to march in step on farm policy, Northern farmers must content themselves with representation in Brussels by a government that has little sympathy for either the Common Agricultural Policy or small farmers.

While the North's beef industry was devastated by the BSE crisis, Mr John Gilliland, chair of the UFU's cereals committee, points out that all sectors have shared in the pain associated with the strength of sterling, which has blocked the possibility of exports.

British farmers are particularly bitter that their government refused to avail of about £1 billion in agrimonetary compensation on offer from Brussels to cushion to currency shock. To do so would have cut into that unique legacy of the Thatcher era, the British EU budget rebate, effectively requiring the government to co-finance the compensation.

The UFU's director of commodities, Mr Wesley Aston, says that as a union it backs British accession to the single currency, which would help to create a level playing field for the agricultural market. In essence, the UFU and the Irish Farmers' Association are in agreement on their strategy for Agenda 2000 - a moderation of the price cuts proposed by the Commission, with farmers being paid full compensation.

In much of this they will have to depend on the Irish Government's success in the negotiations, although the British Secretary of State for Agriculture, Mr Nick Brown, shares Irish and French concerns about the need to maintain support for extensive grass-based beef and dairy production.

"If we want Brown to die for anything," Mr Rowe says, "it is extensive production aids, but he is so keen on milk reform that he is likely to sacrifice anything else." The UFU opposes the cuts in milk prices and quotas that the British government has made a central part of its negotiating strategy. It is also wary of British support for the return of some of the costs of direct aids to national governments, "co-financing".

To suggestions that consumers will benefit from price cuts, it complains bitterly about the probability that such savings will be absorbed by retailers and factories.

"I sold a beef animal to a local butcher for 60p a lb," Mr Rowe says, "only to be offered a roast from the same animal at £3.60 a lb."