Troubled Times for Farmers               

By Cormac MacConnell

SO many of the stories I write here come from the lives and mouths of the small farmers of the west of Ireland.

I have lived among them for the most of my adult life, from Ulster to Munster and, like most Irish, I am only one generation away from the spade myself. I do not know all the nooks and crannies of the acreage of their minds, no, not at all, but I know enough to know how much more there is left to learn. And now I believe there will not be enough time for that.

My brother Sean is the agriculture correspondent for The Irish Times and has been for about the past 15 years. I believe that Sean, himself of course just that one generation away from the spade, knows the complicated Euro-pean agricultural scene rather better than most and, better still, speaks and writes that knowledge in plain language. 

Tonight, in that blunt language, over the telephone from Dublin, he told me that in his view the day of the small farmer in the west of Ireland is about over.

It is an extremely complex affair. The subsidizing of Irish agriculture before we join-ed what was then called the Common Mar-ket, a domestic support system, was complex enough in itself. 

Then, following the arrival of the Common Market, with its armies of bureaucrats, matters became extremely complex altogether. In layman’s language, as I understand it, the workings of the Common Agriculture Policy, or CAP, by which Irish and European farmers have lived for about a decade have linked or coupled subsidies to controlled production levels and quotas. 

This led to the creation of the famous Butter Mountains, Meat Mountains, and indeed Wine Lakes, held off the markets of the world by the EC authorities to sustain the controlled price levels. Subsidies for European farmers, including the Irish, were directly linked, in most cases, to production levels and, amazingly, in latter years, to agreements not to produce goods on to already flooded markets.

The “check in the post” became a catch cry often directed by urbanites against farmers when election fever struck and the urbanites argued that the farming community was not bearing its share of the tax burden.

It is, I think, fair to say that the farming community, though reducing in numbers, deployed more modern methods, plus the subsidies from Europe, to fare well and prosper during the years of the Celtic Tiger.

Now, again in layman’s language, Sean told me tonight that a fresh development in the European Union regulations has effectively written a retirement check for many thousands of Irish farmers, almost certainly the majority of these being on the poorer lands along the West coast. 

What has happened is that the premia and supports for farmers have been decoupled from production levels altogether. In the west, until now, for example, small farmers who sold very young calves for finishing on better lands, sold them often without collecting any of the three premia which cattle attract in the first three years of their lives. 

However, when selling, the market took into account the worth of these premia to the buyer and the prices of the animals reflected this reality. In a little while, through decoupling, that will no longer be the case. The small primary producers in the west will dramatically lose out. 

Decoupling will likewise affect other farming areas, such as the dairying area. This is quota controlled and, in recent years, intensive farmers have bought extra quota at high prices from less intensive neighbors.

It is probable that, due to a flight from farming, that even the cash value of the milk quotas for sale will dramatically drop. As Sean explained it to me, there are likely to be a few years of compensation European Union payments to farmers after decoupling commences. Then only the very fittest and best organized will survive. 

And generally poorer land along the western seaboard, coupled with a range of other socio-economic factors, would seem to spell the end for many of the colorful, durable, beautiful, mysterious, saintly, wicked, earthy Ploughboys of the Western World.

I was in Kilfenora earlier in the evening. There was a sale there in the parish hall of organic produce from the locality. 

I bought a huge organic striploin steak, all marbled and richly textured, straight off the Burren, nothing added. I peppered and salted it when I got home, grilled it five minutes a side, and the taste was beyond compare. 

I wonder what the “intensive” steaks from the big eastern herds of tomorrow will taste like? Not so good, I swear by the Bible. And maybe that is indicative of a greater loss too.

Not for the first time here, nor the last, the conversation with my brother brought to mind those lines of Pearse that said it all about these great people and the lands they lived on:

“The little fields where mountainy men have sown, and soon will reap, close to the gates of heaven.”