The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, has said that an aid package is being prepared by the Government to relieve the current crisis in farming. Due to the bad weather many farmers found it impossible to harvest sufficient hay and silage with the result that fodder prices in some places have quadrupled.
Beef prices have also been badly affected following the collapse of markets in Russia due to that country's economic crisis. Speaking last night Mr Walsh said that he was in the middle of very detailed negotiations with various Government departments about the reliefs. "I hope to be able to come up with an appropriate package to alleviate the particular difficulties which farmers - especially in heavy soil areas - went through this year," he said.
EU agriculture ministers last night called for crisis measures to protect the 40 per cent of EU agriculture exports threatened by the Russian crisis. Mr Walsh, said that unless measures were taken immediately a valuable market, particularly for beef, would be lost. He warned that the scale of the problem could be as serious as the BSE crisis, with Irish beef prices "virtually in freefall".
The Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, pledged to bring forward proposals to the next meeting of ministers in three weeks.
Mr Walsh called for the raising of export premiums and the reintroduction of an export credit guarantee system. He wants considerable caution to be exercised by the commission in selling from intervention into the Russian market. Such sales should not occur, he said, if they had a negative effect on the commercial market.
Speaking of the problems facing Irish beef producers, Mr Walsh told colleagues that Ireland exported 70,000 tonnes of beef to Russia last year and 39,000 tonnes in the first six months of this year. The collapse of the market meant that prices had fallen by 15 per cent since June. They are now 2 per cent lower than in the aftermath of the BSE crisis and 22 per cent below 1995 levels.
The meeting was lobbied by 20 representatives of the Irish Farmers' Association's livestock committee, who also met senior commission officials. The president of the IFA, Mr Tom Parlon, said it was crucial that trading with Russia should resume. He added that the commission's decision to send intervention beef to Russia was destroying the market.
Meanwhile, the battle over the Agenda 2000 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy has gathered pace. The French and Germans yesterday tabled a defence of the system of milk quotas which, they said, had ensured balance in the markets and was sustaining milk production in areas where it was sometimes the only viable product.
This was a response to an earlier proposal from the UK, Sweden, Italy and Denmark, which had suggested a cut of 30 per cent in prices over six years from 2000, after which quotas should be abolished. They also proposed a 4 per cent increase in quotas from 2000 and the extension of direct payments to farmers in compensation.
Such proposals go in the same direction as commission reforms, but far further, and they are extremely unlikely to be agreed.
