The number of full-time farmers has dropped to 90,000, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association claimed yesterday. Mr Kieran Dolan, its general secretary, told a press conference in Dublin attended by 20 farm families, that 2,000 farmers a year were leaving the 135,000 farms in the State.
He predicted that Central Statistics Office figures for 2001 would show there were only 90,000 full-time farmers left and the drift from the land would rise from the recent 2 per cent yearly to 5 per cent.
The ICMSA president, Mr Pat O'Rourke, said the flight from the land was being speeded up by a events which included BSE, foot-and-mouth, falling prices for product and now, poor weather.
The organisation, which has sought a €50 million package to help farm families, said farmers were losing €1 million a week due to the wet weather.
He predicted that dairy farm incomes would fall by 30 per cent this year, an average drop of €7,500 for each dairy farmer. Farmers, he said, were only receiving 28 cents a litre for milk at a time when water was being sold for 300 cents a litre and Guinness 563 cents a litre.
He said incomes outside farming would increase by 8 per cent this year while his members' incomes were dropping. This did not equate to equity in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. He said political parties had promised a commission on farm income before the election but since then he had heard nothing.
Support for the families, who had travelled to Dublin with their children to lobby the politicians, came from the new Minister of State for Finance, Mr Tom Parlon. He pledged his support and said estimates of €50 million lost due to the weather were "not too far off the mark".
He thought vegetable producers in north Co Dublin would probably be first in line for help.
Action on dairy prices was a key demand for the Irish Farmers Association when it met the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, before he meets the EU Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, today. The IFA president, Mr John Dillon, said the Minister had told him this would be top of his agenda at the meeting.
Mr Dillon said with the bad weather and increased costs, milk prices would have to be at least 35 cents a litre to prevent an income collapse in the dairy sector. He said he had expressed grave concern at the depth of the mid-term review of the CAP now being discussed in Brussels where the Commission is expected to issue proposals on July 10th.
On Tuesday, Mr Walsh said he would be opposing anything in the document that would damage Ireland's agriculture.