Farmers need their own benchmarking version to catch up

LISTENING to the debate on benchmarking, farmers can only have envied those who benefited to the tune of incomes nearly 70% over the European average. They certainly wouldn’t be complaining about not getting any benchmarking increase in 2008.

They’d be gleeful at having enjoyed such substantial income improvements in such a short period. Short of applying for civil service jobs, benchmarking for farmers seems a remote possibility.

But even a paltry indexation of their earnings, linked to retail food prices, would be welcomed. Taking 1973 as the base year, and looking at 2005 farmer earnings, inflation indexed cattle farmers would have been due a 75% increase, potato growers a 42% lift, sheep farmers an increase of 23%, liquid milk producers 13%, and pig farmers a top-up of 20%.