ICMSA president: ‘We have a right to expect proper policy’

The annual three-day event where the nation’s attention turns to all matters faming, food production and rural-related begins today, writes ICMSA president Pat McCormack

Outside of our own specialist and superb farm media, the next three days represent one of the few chances that farmers can bring their issues to the wider national media and expect to receive a sympathetic ear and some consideration.

God knows that this year we have more than enough issues to place before them and have rarely needed their active consideration and sensible response more.

I deliberately have not asked for governmental — or anyone else’s — sympathy. Farmers don’t want sympathy. What we want and have every right to expect is sensible timely policy that sees the bigger picture that can work down to and make a difference at individual farm level.

The last year has seen more problems for our farming and food production sector join an already lengthy queue.

ICMSA prides itself on being an organisation that actively seeks solutions. We are not, nor ever will be, an organisation that merely identifies what is wrong and stays at that stage.

Our heritage is to identify what’s wrong and investigate a response that deals with the issue and move the overall situation forward. We do not say that we have always been successful or that our suggestions have always been heeded, but we can say, by reference to our record, that we always and ever came forward with a solution and one, moreover, based on sound logic and in the interests of our family farm system which we believed — and still believe — to be the foundation of our farming and wider agri-food sector and the economic backbone of rural communities.

That is what we are and that is who we represent.

On fodder, we will obviously need a fodder scheme similar to the one introduced last spring, but we’ll also need the minister to open up the low interest loan fund he announced last October, and which hasn’t processed a single application yet.

We know it was originally intended to address Brexit issues but “needs must” and it’s the obvious mechanism to tackle the kind of crippling cash-flow that’s hitting farmers now on foot of surging feeds costs. We also need a really concerted drive on live exports — in a situation where we don’t have enough fodder then we have to get animals out of the yard and out of the country.

On prices, ICMSA has commissioned and released a report that shows the systematic and massive losses farmers have suffered through the Beef Grid currently operated by the factories.

There was a bias against farmers designed into the grid from the first day — a fact that ICMSA was alone in objecting to — and the grid will have to be reviewed, a fact conceded by the Beef Forum no less than three years ago and which has still not happened.

Milk price has recovered slowly but co-ops are still lagging the Ornua Index — in other words, not paying their farmer-suppliers the price that they themselves are receiving per litre.

ICMSA has also called out the practice of dividing milk price into base and bonus elements with a sub-market base price topped-up by the bonus element on grounds of hardship or loyalty.

I really don’t know who they thought was being fooled by this rigamarole; farmers want the market price for their milk and if co-ops want to pay a ‘bonus’ then that should be paid on top of the correct market price.

On Cap 2020, our position is as simple as it can be: direct payments must be at least maintained at present levels and must be directed to active farmers. The declared opposition of Germany and France to the Commission’s proposals have effectively made that disastrous plan redundant and the Commission will have to think again.

Direct payments are critical and represent a payment for a guarantee of the highest standard food on the planet being made available to EU consumers at very cheap prices.

On Brexit, we think it’s impossible to overstate how important this is to every part of Ireland from the Red Cow to Rosscarbery, areas where food production is not a component part of the economy but is rather THE economy itself.

ICMSA has already stated that we think that perhaps too much Irish focus has been given the North-South political dimension at the expense of the West-East economic aspect. But there’s a (very recent) historical context and we understand why the Government felt it had to concentrate on that.

On Budget 2019, Finance Minister Pascal Donohoe to grasp the issues around boom-and-bust farm income cycles. Teagasc is predicting a 50% fall in farmer income this year. Could other sectors could even comprehend that?

We have given the minister a farm management deposit scheme that would allow farmers deposit money in a good year and then draw it down in a bad year and pay the tax at that stage.

It’s completely transparent, regulated, and will give farmers some way of “smoothing out” their finances over a five-year period. It simply has to happen and has to happen on October 9.

- Pat McCormack is president of the ICMSA