When asked in the 1940s about Mitchelstown, Co Cork, the writer Elizabeth Bowen simply said: "Mitchelstown is a farmer's town".
It seems not much has changed in the north Cork town where yesterday the chairman of Mitchelstown Business Association, Mr Tony Lewis, said the town's future lay in the hands of 3,800 farmers who have "no spiritual or cultural links with us".
The farmers Mr Lewis was speaking of are the shareholder/suppliers of the Dairygold Co-operative, which has just made 500 workers redundant. With more redundancies forecast, Mr Lewis described the future for the town as "very grave indeed".
"I know I will be accused of talking down the town, but the truth is that we are totally reliant on Dairygold in this town. It employs 1,000 people here," said Mr Lewis.
"Anything which happens in Dairygold impacts on our town and unfortunately there is not much communication between us and them. They have not kept us abreast of developments at all.
"We commissioned a report which warned about that reliance and the lack of assistance we have had from the various Government and other agencies to set up alternative agencies," he said.
"There are wonderful business people in this town and a great community but we are not getting the support we deserve from either the politicians or the agencies.
"Dairygold should be a better community citizen and help us in what is most definitely a crisis," he said.
"If there are to be future redundancies, and they have been threatened, we want to know about them. We want to know what future Mitchelstown has in Dairygold's plans. We deserve that," he said.
That sense of frustration and distance from the co-operative was to be found virtually everywhere in the town, through the bars and restaurants and even in the shops.
"All the transport workers in Mitchelstown were more of less told they would have to go, and there was nothing voluntary about their going," said a female publican.
However, Mr Jim Woulfe head of the Dairygold's agri-trading division, saw things differently. Costs had to be trimmed for survival.
"We were facing enormous losses and, in the heel of the hunt, we are not a transport company so we have been forced to contract that part of the business out," he said at the company's Fermoy Road offices.
From January 1st, he said, the company would be employing 22 independent companies to carry their goods to the markets and collect the 195 million gallons of milk the company processes each year. "Good redundancy packages were offered and there was a huge response to them and we have phase one in place," he said.
"The main problem facing the dairy industry is that there used to be 10-year cycles. We joined the EU in the 1970s; milk quotas came in the 1980s; the CAP was reformed in the early 1990s and then we had Agenda 2000.
"However, we have been hitting major changes every two years now and we must amend to meet those challenges. We go out of business if we don't."
Standing across from the statue of John Mandeville, the farmer leader who died as a result of opposing the local landlords, Mr Bill Power, Chairman of the local Community Council was scathing in his criticism of Dairygold and its operations.
"We know there had to be redundancies and the company has to be profitable, but why do it coming up to Christmas and in such a brutal way?
"The co-operative buildings are on the site of Mitchelstown Castle and I can't help wondering if we have not replaced one landlord with another," he said.
Attempting to ascertain if workers were forced to leave rather than voluntarily accepting their substantial redundancy packages was not an easy task.
Out of the dozen or so contacted, most of them felt that there would be a better future outside the company than in a system where more redundancies are forecast and productivity levels must increase.
Mr Lewis said he feared what the coming months would bring unless political and structural support for the town was forthcoming.
That new reality will most certainly include part two of Dairygold's plans to reduce the number of its processing plants from four to perhaps one - and Mitchelstown wants to be the location of that final plant.