The fodder is running out - and with it a way of life
Serious fodder crisis reveals catastrophe for small farmers, says
Roisín de Rossa
``There just is no food left. What fodder there is selling at
exorbitant prices, £3 or more for a bale of hay, more than £20 for a
bale of silage. Farmers are out scouring the roads looking to buy
fodder. There isn't any to be had,'' says Pat Gilhooly, a farmer from
Ballinamore, Co Leitrim. ``And it's the same all over the West -
Roscommon, Longford, Cavan, Mayo, Galway, Kerry.''
``Every farmer will tell you the same. If we've enough to keep going
till the end of February, we're lucky. But with the ground like it
is, the cattle won't be out in the fields till April, may be May. As
it is the ground is so wet the cattle are up to their stomachs. And
that might be all that gets up to their stomachs unless help comes
soon.''
Peter Honeyman, a full time farmer and PRO for the IFA in Co Leitrim,
talked of bringing 2,500 bales up from Wexford, at £300 a trip, to
help out in the county, selling it on at cost price to farmers who
are stuck. He says that at least £1000 per farm is needed urgently,
with £40 per live unit. The measures announced this week of £20m for
40,000 farmers are not enough.
``The £300 which was given out before Christmas and which didn't get
to every region, was no use either. At the present price per bale
that would only feed ten cows for a couple of weeks.''
Farmers who have been farming for 50 years, or more, like Jo Gallogly
from Ballinamore, say it's the worst crisis ever. Why? The immediate
crisis arose because it has rained for 12 months. Farmers couldn't
get onto the land to lift the hay or silage. It was too wet. The
fodder shortage means that farmers needed to sell cattle. But the
prices have collapsed.
``A 300kg. beast would fetch £400. Now you are lucky if you get £240,''
says SF Councillor Liam McGirl, another part-time farmer, who had to
sell six cattle last week, and got nothing for them.
``The people in the midlands who used to be up buying up cattle for to
finish. They are not coming up anymore, they'd rather sell fodder,''
says Pat Gilhooly.
The present crisis comes on top of the collapse of the rouble last
October. Russia took 39% of all EU beef, and when this market
collapsed, prices plummeted. And it was prices not just for beef, but
also for sheep and pig. All have suffered disaster this year.
A glut on the EU market, a slump in Japanese demand because of their
recession and the burning down of the Ballymoney plant last summer
have combined to push pig prices, which tend always to be cyclical,
down to what Liam Ryan of the IFA's pig committee says are their
worst level ever. And the trouble with pigs is that when they are
ready they have to go. A farmer is penalised on overfat pigs, in
addition to having to keep feeding them.
Cavan and Monaghan pig farmers have been particularly badly hit.
There is just nowhere to take the pigs for slaughter. They blame the
minister for that. Of the 20 pig producers round Monaghan before
Christmas, three are already gone. It is dire straits indeed.
How many small farmers will survive this latest crisis? Not very
many, says Joe Gallogly. Perhaps a third to two thirds of the 2000
farmers remaining in the county.
``People forget that when we first joined the EEC, the Mansholt Plan
dictated the future for Irish farming. In the West it was the nature
trail and tourism.'' And that is what has happened.
We're now left with around 150,000 farmers. Some people will say this
will be down to 30,000 in the next five to 10 years.
``There used to be 350 farmers bringing milk into Ballinamore,'' says
Pat Gilhooly. ``Now there are less than 20. There are very few full
time farmers left. But there aren't any part-time jobs either.''
A recent survey of smallholders in Roscommon showed that one farmer
in two is earning less than £5,000 a year from farming. Leitrim is no
different.
Back in the last century people fought for the Three F's and out of
it we got peasant proprietorship, small farms, owner occupied.
Increasingly they have become less viable in a world where now, at
the start of the next century, we have to adjust to world prices set
by US and Australasia and South America, where it's ranching, and
land is rented. 50% of land in America changes hands every year.
You'd fit all the sheep in Ireland in to one field in Australia.
With the expansion of the EU, Poland and Hungary about to join, the
days where the EEC wanted at all costs to have self sufficiency in
food, and was prepared to pay for it, are long gone. We are now
facing into the next GATT round, which has to bring EU prices closer
into line with world prices, with declining EU supports, which are
under negotiation right now. All this says one thing - that there is
no future for the small farmers of the west of Ireland on the land.
What did we do wrong? Joe Gallogly, who said all of this 20 years
ago, says, ``Ireland never planned. Never produced the plan needed to
enable farmers to become viable, with good husbandry, farming
practice, secure markets and sustainable incomes.
``The smaller farmers couldn't implement a farm plan, because it meant
he had to borrow, and he was too cute for that. It wasn't brains that
kept him out of the banks, it was fear. As they say a small farmer
lives poor and dies rich. He hangs onto the land he has, but with the
price of land now at £2000 an acre, or more, he can't afford to buy
more land. No farmer can afford to borrow to buy land.''
Instead everything has been left to the higgledy piggledy of the
market, which of course in the EU is the most regulated market in the
world, and has an iron law, that the big get bigger and the small go
to the wall. The market, with its inherent cycles and uncertainties,
has increasingly driven Irish farmers into reliance on `the cheque in
the post'.
d the trouble with the cheque in the post is that the largest
farmers have scooped the pot. The figures are astonishing. Ireland's
top ten beef farmers shared grants last year of £1.5 million. One
County Louth beef farmer alone cleaned up £400,000. The top ten
tillage farmers walked away with £1.7 million between them. More than
two thirds of the record EU transfer to Ireland of £2.7 Billion last
year went to farming. But a massive 80% of these funds went to the
richest 20% of farmers.
The money instead of being used to secure a sustainable agricultural
base in counties where agriculture was inefficient small holdings,
giving incomes well below national poverty levels, it was used to
further widen the difference between rich and poor farmers.
Every time that farming hits a crisis, the larger farmer may sneeze,
but the small farmer dies.
``And then,'' as Pat Gilhooly says, ``the meat market has to be taken
out of the hands of the beef barons. Look at them. Just this week
GreenIsle Meats was importing beef from Uruguay, at a time when Irish
farmers can't sell their stock. Yet Irish taxpayers are still
expected to pick up the tab of debts and EU fines incurred through
their nefarious practices over the years. The barons set the farmers'
price.
Only one out of every ten cattle is consumed in Ireland, the rest are
for the boat. ``But there again is the trouble,'' says Pat. ``It's
political why we can't sell into the African and Middle Eastern
markets. The government doesn't want to offend the US. Markets like
Libya, or Iraq have dried up.''
d so Mansholt's original grand design for the west is coming
creeping into being. As forestry quietly spreads down into the
lowland farms, the big house on the hill is coming back, but this
time its not providing any jobs. The small farmer is on the road,
with his hungry cattle. And he is not coming back.
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