THE next Minister for Agriculture will require Riverdance-like fleetness of foot to avoid losing his or her legs at the ankles when so much is at stake for Irish agriculture. The main task will he to protect the industry.
External events will put pressure on prices. Europe will attempt to cut supports both to conclude a new World Trade Agreement and to expand the Union eastwards.
For the wolf has arrived at the farmhouse door after tour good years. This year, farm incomes will fall by at least 10 per cent.
While we have come to expect howls of protest from the farm organisations about everything, even they are a bit overawed by the misfortunes which have been visited upon them and the industry over the past 11/2 years.
First came BSE, the (primarily) British disease which became an Irish nightmare as European consumption of beef dropped and many non-EU countries refused to buy our product because we could not claim our herds were BSE-free.
As the beef market began to recover there was a huge increase in our own BSE figures. This cost us the live cattle trade to Egypt and Libya, and an eight-county ban by Russia.
Just as the meat factories were getting this under control, the EU was forced under the terms of the GATT agreement to cut EU export refunds on beef, the lucrative subsidies they receive for trading outside the Union.
Then came the unkindest cut of all.
The roar of the Celtic Tiger, which is an urban animal, caused an 8.8 per cent revaluation of the Irish Green Pound, the notional currency in which EU agricultural supports are paid. This caused a similar drop in the headage supports being paid to Irish farmers.
Over the range of product areas - beef, milk, cereals, pigs and sheep - farmers are experiencing a drop in prices, a cut in supports and an unsure future, especially on the less viable holdings where supports are necessary.
The Minister, Mr Yates, makes much of having managed to secure £185 million in compensation for the beef sector because of the BSE crisis. But now the dairymen and sheepmen are looking for help for the hard times which are coming.
He and those around him have less to say about the Government's currency exchange policies. Farmers, factories and co-operatives claim these make them very uncompetitive in the international markets, even though there has been a 4.4 per cent fall in the value of the pound in recent weeks.
This problem has united the industry from factory to farm in demanding that Ireland keep the pound as weak as possible to ensure that the advantages we have had remain.
While everything above would seem to indicate that farming is in a state of crisis and that politicians are getting a hard time on fang doorsteps, this is only partially true.
The fact is that the 120,000 people who describe themselves as farmers are well sand-bagged against the outside world and will continue to be so as long as governments can negotiate at Brussels level to keep it that way.
For instance, the sector received supports worth over £1.5 billion from Brussels last year, a figure that has more than doubled since the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1992. Direct payments this year will total £950 million. There will be another £550 million from indirect payments such as export refunds
Over 30 per cent of farm income now comes in an envelope from Brussels. This figure is growing fast as the new schemes brought in by the 1992 CAP reforms come into operation.
For instance, Irish farmers have received £56 million from the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and a further £60 million from the Early Retirement Scheme.
This allows farmers to retire at 55 with up to £10,000 a year for 10 years, on condition that the full-time farmer who takes over expands the holding. This has already led to an increase of nearly 11 hectares in the average farm size in Ireland, and more than 6,000 Irish farmers have retired under its terms.
But can this flow of money continue? That is the question the politicians are being asked on the doorsteps by the farming community, which is by now a minority in rural Ireland.
All the political parties are promising to support the family farm. But this will be a difficult task - almost as difficult as the old election promise to drain the Shannon - when Irish agriculture will have to regear itself to trading at world prices, not the artificial prices paid in the EU.
Ireland has distinct advantages over most other places in the world when it comes to producing the grass on which our system will continue to be based.
We have a vibrant dairying sector which can compete with the best in the world, and our tillage growers, if they get the weather, can also compete with the best.
But it is over beef production that the politicians are going to feel the pinch. There are 100,000 farmers who claim to have some animals, but many of these are not capable of staying in business under the coming regime.
All the indications are that in an expanded Union supports will be switched away from produce to the land itself.
This is intended to break the cycle in which those who produce most are paid most, a system which is not to Ireland's advantage with its small farms and low output.
The farming vote will go to the party which can best demonstrate that it can defend what has been won from Brussels, can protect Irish trading interests in a world arena and, above all, continue to defend farmers at the Cabinet table from the enemy within, urban-based Ministers who feel the farmers have got more than their fair share.