Farming is now a gamble
While the European Commission takes its August holiday, farmers across Europe are left wondering if their industry will be left untouched until 2006, as was promised in their Agenda 2000 shake-up, or if they will have to face into an entirely new way of farming next year.
The Commission in Brussels has left not just farmers on tenterhooks, but the entire food industry which takes their produce and the farm inputs industry which supplies farmers.
According to a study by IFA chief economist Con Lucey, the Irish food processing industry will lose 355m per year of raw material if the Commission’s CAP reform proposals are accepted.
At retail level, that represents 432m of sales.
Most of that setback would be borne by beef, sheep meat and grain processors.
Until EU politicians reach agreement on CAP, which could be at least one year away, all three sectors must put any major developments on hold.
Don’t expect any major moves either by the firms that supply €2,270m of inputs and services per year to Irish farmers.
The animal feed, fertiliser, veterinary, repairs, machinery, energy and construction businesses all have hanging over them a long term cut of up to one-third in business from Irish cattle and grain farmers.
Not just business plans are on hold, according to IFA, 19,000 jobs are in the balance, including those directly affected on farms and in food processing and farm inputs and those whose jobs are dependent on the spending power of the agri-sector.
Workers will have little indication of their future prospects until the EU Council of Agriculture Ministers’ next meeting, on September 23. Even then, few are counting on the Commission or Council to put the minds of the millions working in the EU’s agri-sector at rest.
Maybe like farmers, they should start gambling on the future. Some farmers have been busy since it was proposed on July 10 to base farmers’ entitlements in a reformed CAP on their EU aid receipts in three unspecified reference years.
Gambling on this being one of the reference years, they are changing their farming plans every way they can, to maximise their EU aid cheque this year.
It may cost them money now, but it could increase their long term earnings and the value of their farms, if 2002 proves to be a reference year for the new CAP.
Business shouldn’t be a gamble. But that’s what the EU has turned farming into.
