15% of farmers borrow for foreign property investment

In the Irish Examiner marquee there was plenty of advice from Eddie Hobbs for the farmers who Paddy Horgan said were borrowing 20% for land purchase and 15% for foreign property investment.

“Mathematically, farming doesn’t make sense. The 1 to 1.5% return on assets in farming is nonsense, you’d stay only for capital gains in land value,” was the money man’s sobering advice to his listeners.

But he acknowledged that deeper forces are at work, and farmers in the audience know themselves that they are not in agriculture for money alone.