Day of action must be carefully handled

Even as I emphasised the need for farm organisations to “protect the interests of their members” last week, and described farm leaders as “farming generals”, the National Council of the IFA was deciding that the situation on the ground was now so serious that a “major national day of action” was called for to “fight for the future of family farming”.

I had been questioning IFA’s plans to tackle the control exercised by the beef processors over cattle prices paid to farmers.

In a press release announcing the “Day of Action”, IFA president John Bryan was critical of the Government’s failure “to address the dominance of the retail multiples”, and emphasised the need for the Government “to defend the full CAP Budget in Europe”, in the CAP reform negotiations.