Macra’s 60th a milestone for organisation

THE sixtieth anniversary of the founding of Macra has marked one of the most important developments in Irish rural life in the past century.

A small group of young farmers came together in 1944 with the inspiration to set up Macra, to give young farmers a voice in policy making for their business. But they could not have envisaged the far reaching implications which their coming together achieved.

Macra as founded as a “social, cultural and educational” body for young farmers. All three were vitally important in those dark days of farming in Ireland, with low incomes, no mechanisation, limited markets, and a state highly dependent on agriculture, as World War Two drew to a close.