Call for spotlight on retail margins

RETAILERS are getting three times the price that farmers get for their beef and six times what producers get for their milk, a farm leader has claimed.

Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association president Malcolm Thompson said supermarkets and their practices deserve a lot more attention and regulation.

“We now understand the disastrous consequences of a complete lack of oversight or regulation of the financial sector.

“The price collapse in all farm sectors in 2009 proves that time is not on our side,” he said, when welcoming a statement by Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith that supermarket responsibility extends to producers and processors.

Mr Thompson said the price collapse also demonstrates that allowing a few multinationals to dominate the entire marketplace is destroying the viability of farming across Europe.

“ICSA has always contended that supermarkets have undue influence on the control of product prices and have a happy knack of ensuring their margins improve while cost reductions are inevitably borne by the producer,” he said.

Mr Thompson said the ICSA will be putting on pressure, at a national and EU level to demand more effective regulation of retail margins and practices.

Meanwhile, ICSA rural development chairman Gabriel Gilmartin has called for an honest debate with all politicians on the future of farming.

With the closure of the REPS 4 scheme as well as proposed cuts under An Bord Snip Nua, it was time for all of them to engage with farmers. “ICSA has always maintained that viable export-led industries such as the farming sector should be supported and not routinely savaged by disproportionate cuts as is currently happening.

“We need to hear what the opposition and Government backbenchers are planning on doing to protect farm incomes and rural Ireland,” he said.