The demise of the smaller farmer
Roisín de Rossa looks at the crisis in agriculture which brought
40,000 farmers onto the streets of Dublin last week
The 40,000 farmers who marched through Dublin last week got an
extremely bad press. They were variously described as `greedy
grabbing dungdingers', the `guys with dung on their shoes', and,
with some help from the AA, as `bumpkin to bumpkin' winding their
weary way to the capital to air severe grievances. The recent
German report in Der Spiegel concerning the Irish farmer
`scroungers' looked almost complimentary by comparison..
The immediate causes of the present crisis lie in the disastrous
summer and the collapse of the Russian market which takes around
40% of EU beef exports and 37% of EU butter products. This has
put pressure on producer prices, which has not led, as the naive
might expect, to a corresponding fall in prices of meat in the
shops, largely because meat processors and supermarket chain
stores are large, few, and happy to make money.
But the real crisis facing farmers is far deeper and more serious
in the longer term. The crisis for Irish farmers lies in the EU's
Common Agricultural Policy.
In 1972, when there were over 258,000 farmers in the 26 Counties,
the Mansholt Plan announced that the West of Ireland, consisting
almost exclusively of what were called `transitional farmers' was
fit for tourism and forestry. And this is exactly what has come
to pass.
There are now 134,000 farmers. The `transitional' farmer - in
`transition' to leaving farming altogether - who had a farm of
less than 20 acres (about a third of all farms at the time) has
gone. He'll get the dreaded ``cheque in the post'', which means
signing off, not signing on.
The middle category, the so called `development' farms, with farm
size of 30-50 acres, is being squeezed. The CAP did nothing for
transitional farmers, and very little for development farmers. It
wasn't intended to. 80% of the EU money which flowed into Irish
farming went to the top 20% of farmers with over 100 acres. What
was a viable farm of over 30 acres ten years ago, has now dropped
into the category of farmers desperately trying to expand and
develop against a pricing structure, premium, payment and quota
system which prohibits expansion to the smaller farmer.
d the development farmer knows that as the CAP gets phased out,
as it must to accommodate the expansion of the EU into Eastern
European countries, that he must expand or perish. Dairy farmer,
Tony Curtin, member of the ICMSA, put it plainly. ``What we most
fear is when the milk quotas end.'' This is threatened in three
years time.
The large farmer with a 100,000 gallon quota now (with a herd of
over 100 cows) can afford to sell his extra milk at 20p and 30p
below the current price paid for quota milk, but the smaller
farmer, with his 30 to 40 cows, who has not been able to afford
expansion, can't. The smaller holder has been prevented from
expanding milk production because of the quota system itself. All
he was able to do was to lease a quota at 30p a gallon, whereas
the big farmer could afford to buy up land and the quota which
went with it.''
Equally in beef, headage payment at £85 per head amounts to a
considerable payment to the farmer who has 100 suckler cows, and
can afford to hang onto them for a couple of years and receive
the total headage payment of around £200. The smaller farmer with
perhaps 20 cows takes in a correspondingly smaller payment.
EU money was never used to favour the smaller farmer who needed
the assistance most if he was to have the opportunity to develop
the farm. Just what Mansholt's plan said. ``And to cap it all,''
says Declan Finucane, a Kerry farmer from Listowel, ``the minister
offers us £300 to help us out of the fodder crisis. But £300
wouldn't buy more than 150 bales, and that wouldn't keep one cow
for the winter!''
The gravity of the current situation is clear from a study of
farming in Roscommon, published in August this year (A Rural
Living - Myth or Reality). The figures show half of the farm
households earning less than £5000. The payment of Family Income
Supplement to these farmers, as was demanded last week of the
Government, is much needed assistance but not even part way to a
cure.
Tony sums up the position for the smaller farmers, ``Until the
smaller farmers organise themselves to secure preferential aid,
directed towards development, expansion and increased efficiency,
there will be nothing to stand between them and Mansholt, except
partnership bought with the `cheque in the post'.''
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