Farmers' moans are genuine this time - globalisation and EU reform mean food production will change here forever, writes Kathy Sheridan
As farm families strolled up to Kildalton College in the village of Piltown in south Co Kilkenny for Teagasc's agriculture and food show in the breezy June sunshine, flyaway copies of an eight-page Irish Farmers' Journal special fluttered around their ankles. The headline, visible from 100 yards, reflected Irish farming's current obsession: "Brazil Laid Bare: Brazilian beef fails to meet EU standards."
The report, the result of a joint IFA/Irish Farmers Journal research trip to South America, was damning, citing "totally inadequate foot-and-mouth disease controls, non-existent [animal] traceability, widespread environmental degradation and social exploitation".
The authors' crowning achievement came when Asda, the UK retail giant now owned by Wal-Mart, removed Brazilian beef from its shelves after a briefing from the country's National Farmers' Union.
For Irish farmers drowning in tags, tests, traceability systems and a ratio of one "overpaid, arrogant, nit-picking" civil servant to every 30 farmers (in the words of one frustrated beef man), it was vindication. The "double standards" and true price of "low-cost" Brazilian beef were finally exposed,claimed the report. For the rest of the population, however, the reporters could hardly be described as neutral.
"When did the IFA develop its social conscience?" sneered one urbandweller. BSE, foot and mouth, dodgy welfare practices, beef tribunal revelations, the bottomless pit of bovine TB eradication
and the "cheque in the post" subsidies still rankle.
The cumulative result is that consumers are less inclined to make the distinction between producer-led scandals such as BSE and processor-led outrages such as bovine DNA in chicken meat (labelled "Irish" though sourced in south Asia, to add insult to injury). They are also less inclined to listen when farmers point out that supermarkets continue to rake in huge profits on farm produce, demanding multiples of the prices charged 10 years ago, while farmers are being paid less per kilo or litre than a decade ago.
Farmers are told to supply for the market. But what market? Try reconciling the apparent consumer obsession with allergies, food intolerances and how fresh food is produced, with the booming market
in fat-, salt-, sugar- and additives-rich "dashboard dining" and processed "ready meals". Ask an urban consumer about challenges for farmers and they might blithely suggest that the "whingeing" farmers should "go organic". But if consumers are indeed prepared to pay a premium for organic produce, as is constantly suggested, then why are the supermarkets not full of it, asks Fine Gael MEP, Mairéad McGuinness.
"People go to a farmers' market for a day out on a Sunday - but they'll go to Tesco for 95 per cent of their groceries. And I'll guarantee you that those who do buy organic, are not buying everything organic.
Are they being equally environmentally aware when they're buying their washing powder?" she asks. "People think farmers are stupid. Two or three might be able to do it maybe but for the bulk of farmers, that's not where the market is. People are shopping around for value and that includes food. It's why Aldi and Lidl are surviving in Ireland."
Aidan Larkin, a beef and dairy farmer and county chairman of Offaly IFA, points out that Irish farmers have produced the best quality beef precisely as various individual European countries like it. "Yet we're importing it ourselves. Even our home-grown produce is not used in our own country as it should be.
You see people going into Lidl and getting it as cheap as they can."
An estimated 240,000 people, including spouses and family members, still work on Irish farms on a full- or parttime basis. For about 113,000, it is the principal occupation. But within 10 years, according to a recent Teagasc study, the number of full-time dairy farmers will halve. Fewer than 6 per cent of beef farms and only 17 per cent of tillage farms will be viable. Full-time farming will become concentrated in the east and south, and in about 20 years time will involve fewer than 15,000 farmers.
The automatic handover from father to son or daughter no longer applies, unless the offspring - in the words of one such scion, who works in IT - "can afford to farm as a hobby. And who needs that seven- day commitment and the sly comments about cheques in the post?"
Aidan Larkin, whose eldest son is 15, sees little hope for the next generation.
"I love farming," he says. "I love being a good farmer, I love being an economical farmer. The most difficult thing for me is that no young farmers are coming back in. My sons are dead keen stockmen but I see no future in it for them. The young are just going away and getting other jobs and the commercial entity is going to be lost."
Does the survival of commercial Irish farmers matter? Will anyone notice if in 10 years' time most beef on our shelves is South American or the chicken is Asian?
The debate about food supply and its sources has become skewed as a result of the Western focus on obesity, argues McGuinness. "But there are a lot of hungry people in the world. Here in the West, we've been able to move away from considerations of hunger to worrying about obesity, but that may not continue forever. The EU should be ensuring that we are self-sufficient in food with a little bit over, rather than have to rely on imported food."
But agriculture, for long the pampered pet of the EU, is now being bartered for the benefit of other sectors. "The EU wants to sell more goods and services to non-EU countries like Brazil to promote growth, and those countries in return want access to our agriculture markets," says McGuinness. "But if we allow more access, it would cause the price of beef, for example, to drop disastrously, making it uneconomic to produce it here . . . Agriculture is not widget production. It's a two-and-a-half-year cycle . . . Do we ever stop and think what environmental standards apply that allow outside countries to be so cheap? You're talking about a different scale. There's no minimum wage in Brazil; people don't expect great things of employers there. The EU Commissioner says we will never compete on price but on quality and niche markets. But ultimately, if Brazil beef comes in at a price, that sets the tone of the market."
BACK IN KILDALTON in June, where this year's theme was "Options for the Future", the way forward seemed clear. In the Rural Development marquee, 52 crisp, well-designed fact sheets were on offer, ranging from apple, cheese, chutney, chocolate, fruit, goose, honey, ice cream and lavender production to ostrich, turkey and yoghurt. But according to the programme manager, John Whiriskey, the most interest by far was in non-food enterprises, concerned with maximising the use of the farm home and renovating outbuildings for use as self-catering units and B&Bs. Interest was also strong in enterprises such as llama and alpaca wool production, wind energy, the leisure horse business, and
franchises.
For tillage farmers who once farmed large acreages of wheat, beet and barley, the big new focus is on energy crops, such as oilseed rape, willows and miscanthus. Aidan Larkin is sceptical: "They're a longterm job. Also the Government is getting its best tax take out of oil. Do you think they're going to blow themselves out of the water by supporting energy crops?"
No new food crops or produce are set to transform Irish farming, although there is a growing market for some of the established ones. The highly successful Coolfinn organic goats' milk farm, run by Michael and Rose Shanahan in Co Waterford, was a pioneer of its kind in 1983. The Cleary family's Glenisk yoghurt brand in Co Offaly has been a huge entrepreneurial success story.
Individual farmers seeking to turn their surplus milk into ice cream, cheese or yoghurt businesses must contend with the might of the "tough, predatory" conglomerates who will under-cut or simply copy them. But one who has managed to hang in there, dairy farmer Nicholas Dunne of Killowen Yoghurt, says that "it has given us fantastic hope. We would be very positive about the future".
JUST AS IN every other sector, however, not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Even successful lines such as free-range eggs (which now account for up to 30 per cent of the market) remain a niche market
for farmers, says Nuala King, a poultry specialist with Teagasc. Goose, considered a stylish - but extremely expensive - alternative to turkey at Christmas, and marketed as such, will "definitely remain a niche", with around 100 producers in total, producing anything from 20 to a few 100 each. Ostrich, despite some very slick marketing, "didn't really take off the ground in Ireland. Some people just managed to sell on some very expensive stock".
Deer farming, another star that rose and faded, is coming back, but according to Co Wexford deer farmer Will Warham it needs more marketing support. More and more, says King, farmers will have to think in terms of convenience products. "The day is gone when you could sell a live or New York-dressed bird."
Meanwhile, the inexorable march of CAP reform continues. In 2013, the current cheque-in-the-post system will end, and no one knows what will replace it.
"What you have to remember," says Mairéad McGuinness, "is that you are dealing with people and families. We can't all sell out."