WTO is elephant in corner
It has loomed over them for years, and will for years to come, but very little preparation has been done for its likely eventual crushing rampage.
A Teagasc report has predicted a bleak future for farming in Ireland if a world trade agreement is agreed in the WTO talks.
And it also admits that knowledge and research is scanty on how people committed to working in farming would react.
Effectively, no one knows what would happen to the land, labour, milk quota and other necessary resources for farming, if a WTO deal is agreed.
Perhaps ignoring the implications of free trade is the only answer, when the possibilities are so depressing.
But it’s not realistic to do business under the threat of annihilation every couple of years.
And it is not fair to encourage Irish farmers to invest, when it is estimated that WTO reform could leave just 6% of cattle farms and 17% of tillage farms economically viable by 2015.
That’s the farmer wipe out that will be talked about next week, when leaders of the world’s eight richest nations meet, with World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz, among others, urging them to do something to free up global trade.
Meanwhile, Irish dairy farmers are being urged to invest up to €120,000 to qualify for waste management grant aid — as if the future ahead was rosy.
But if the G8 leaders have a good meeting next week, and their trade ministers get the finger out, we could have a WTO deal which would ensure that a typical Irish dairy farmer could double his milk production, and still end up worse off.
That’s probably a four or five to one bet, because the WTO’s 149 member countries are so far apart, and running out of time to reach agreement.
If they make no progress this month, farmers probably won’t have WTO nightmares again for a few years.
But the bad dreams could be back as early as 2009, with WTO negotiations resuming, and threatening to leave just 6% of cattle farms and 17% of tillage farm businesses economically viable in Ireland, due to reductions of about 20% in the milk price, 15% in beef prices, and 2% in farm gate wheat and barley prices.
This sword hanging over Irish farmers deserves the full attention of the Government.
They have already lost the sugar beet industry to WTO, but that was only a taster.
Surely they too are not ignoring the possibility of tens of thousands of farmers being forced into the non-farm workforce by a WTO deal — just at the time that the traditional low-tech manufacturing operations that already employ many farmers are beginning to move to low-cost locations worldwide.
Farmers recently took some comfort from Agriculture and Food Minister Mary Coughlan’s total opposition to any further concession in agriculture by the EU at the WTO negotiations.
She may have the support of many other EU Agriculture Ministers, but the EU’s Trade and Agriculture Commissioners, Peter Mandelson and Mariann Fischer Boel seem ready to do deals. And who would bet against the ultimate power brokers at next week’s G8 meeting flexing their muscles to the detriment of farmers?
Whether a WTO agreement comes this summer, of in four or five years, will our Government step in to rescue farmers?
That’s the only assurance that could leave farmers investing for the future with some degree of confidence.
