The Irish beef and sugar beet industries will be badly exposed if the European Commission concedes further CAP reforms at the World Trade Organisation talks, the IFA said yesterday.
Speaking at the publication of a position paper in advance of the WTO talks which start next week in Mexico, the Irish Farmers' Association president, Mr John Dillon, said: "The reforms pushed through by the Commission in reform of the Common Agricultural Policy must be the outer limit of the negotiations and the Government should put this on record.
"It would be totally unacceptable to IFA if further CAP cuts had to be implemented between now and 2013 as a result of the World Trade talks," added Mr Dillon, who is also vice-president of COPA, the European farming organisation.
Mr Dillon, who is travelling to Cancun in Mexico for the opening of the talks, said European agriculture had taken the pain in terms of CAP reform in the Luxembourg agreement.
He said the greatest threat to Irish agriculture was in the area of import tariffs because Ireland was so dependent on its ability to export.
"Within the overall EU offer of a 36 per cent average cut in tariffs, we are particularly vulnerable in the case of two products - high-value beef cuts and sugar production," he said.
The IFA's analysis showed that high-value cuts of boneless beef can already enter the EU market having paid the full tariff and this was happening every day in trade between the EU and Brazil and Argentina, he said.
"Clearly if the EU tariff were to be cut by 36 per cent, these products would seriously undermine the EU market price. Ireland is particularly vulnerable because of our export-dependence," he said.
He said his organisation was proposing that the EU negotiate a rebalancing of the tariff structure for boneless beef, whereby a tiered system linked to product value would apply, similar to that for bone-in beef.
He said that should the EU agree to cut import tariffs on sugar by more than 15 per cent, not only would farming jobs be at risk but so, too, would be the 600 jobs in the two main sugar processing factories.
"We are proposing that the EU should offer only the minimum 15 per cent cut in the import tariff for sugar and that any CAP support cuts which might flow from the negotiations should be fully compensated."
Expressing disappointment that neither the dairy nor beef processing sector had "got their act together to face the challenges from WTO", Mr Dillon added that on the import side, butter was vulnerable to any import tariff cut greater than 36 per cent.
"As regards export refunds, while we have to live with the EU offer to cut expenditure on export refunds by 45 per cent by 2012, I want to stress that the EU will continue to need some levels of refunds for dairy product - particularly butter and also for beef - for the foreseeable future," he said.
He said Ireland and Europe would have to be aware that the WTO was about negotiating cuts in protection and support and should not be allowed to become a tool for the elimination of the protection and support that provide food security.
He said he would present the IFA's submission to the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, at a meeting today.