Call for farmers to be excluded from Competition Act

THE Irish Farmers’ Association has called for farmers to be excluded from the Competition Act to allow them to negotiate prices with big supermarket chains.

Yesterday, IFA president Padraig Walshe said farmers should be included when the 2002 Act is amended this year to allow some self-employed groups to collectively negotiate prices. The amendment is necessitated by a government decision to allow doctors’ representative organisations to agree medical card fees.

Mr Walshe said: “Comparing the position of the individual farmer and the major retail multiple, it is obvious that the balance of power in the retail food chain is totally unequal.

“It is absolutely absurd that under the current competition law, farmers are prohibited from acting together to negotiate fair prices.”

The IFA contends that since multinational supermarket chains have entered the Irish market farm produce prices have been pushed down, although these savings have not been passed onto consumers.

Mr Walshe added: “The Government has recognised that current competition legislation does not work properly in particular sectors. As a result, they are committed to introducing legislation in 2009 to amend the Competition Act. This amendment must also include farmers and their marketing organisations, to help rebalance bargaining power in the food chain.”

The association has pointed to other European countries, such as France, where in certain sectors producers, suppliers and retailers regularly meet to fix produce prices.

The IFA has had a number of run-ins with the Competition Authority.

In 2002, Competition Authority inspectors raided the IFA head office in Dublin as part of a probe arising from farmers’ protests at Drogheda Port, which prevented a shipment of imported wheat from being unloaded.

In 2001, the authority wrote to the organisation after the IFA criticised milk prices in Aldi group stores. Prior to that former IFA president Tom Parlon had attacked the authority after it won an interim injunction restraining a blockade by farmers at the natural dairies plant in Convoy, Co Donegal.

Yesterday, the organisation stated that in one case of a milk farmer prosecuted for contravening the Competition Act, the authority had stated it was even illegal for “two farmers to discuss milk prices outside the church gate”.