Irish Examiner view: Green shoots of change are needed 

Across the EU, young women represent only 3% of farm managers. File picture

Only one in three farms across the EU is run by a woman and only one in 50 is managed by a young woman.

In the 2023 Census, it emerged that just 13% of farm holders in Ireland are women and it would appear the long-standing disparity between the numbers of men and women in farming is not decreasing at any sort of an acceptable rate.

Last week the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food hosted an Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Agriculture called Securing the future of farming — from policy to practice.

One of those who addressed the gathering was European Commission official Esther de Lange, who said that across the union “farming is still very much a man’s world”.

She highlighted a number of factors that are inhibiting entrants to farming — especially women — including high entry costs, barriers to land, limited mobility, and slow succession.

Across the EU between 11% and 12% of farmers are aged under 40, with Ireland being slightly above that average, at 13.6% of farmers under 40. One in three farmers will soon retire, illustrating that the time to act is now.

One of the most concerning facts is that, as of 2023, 32% of farms were managed by women, with 37% of them aged over 65 and 26% under the age of 40. Young women represent only 3% of farm managers.

The urgency of resetting the gender balance is apparent, particularly in the light of risks to food security within the EU and especially so in the face of ongoing geopolitical, energy, and climate challenges.

Because Cap payments are largely assessed per hectare and women own less land, they receive less than 15% of the total monies available in income supports.

This has to change, on farms both here and across the EU; otherwise it will be impossible to deliver generation renewal or gender equality.

Attitudes must shift quickly on cocaine use

Former Garda commissioner Drew Harris’s statement last week that cocaine use across Ireland has been “normalised” by the professional classes, is stark indeed.

He said cocaine use is being driven by middle-aged, middle- class users of the drug.

The former commissioner, who retired last September after 40 years in policing, says that public debate should now focus on the damage caused by middle-class drug use to working-class districts “ravaged by the gangs”.

Young men and women are being coerced and driven into the drug trade, while affluent users of the drug “skip off into the sunset, pretty unperturbed by this”.

Saying that “drugs intimidation is happening to working- class families”, he pointed to the hypocrisy of users who give no thought to the human cost globally of the drugs trade.

Cocaine users don’t appear to give any consideration to the injury and death, ecological impact, human trafficking, and the ruination of individual countries caused by cartels exporting hundreds of millions worth of cocaine to the US and Europe every week. The emasculation of operations such as the Kinahan organised crime group will obviously help in the fight against drugs, but the attitude of the professional classes to their own usage also needs to change radically in order to fight this fight.

Crackdown all too predictable

Russia has never been a place friendly to dissenters against whatever regime has held sway in Moscow. The current one is no different.

In fact, under the stewardship of Vladimir Putin, restrictions on free speech have reverted to Soviet-era levels of authoritarianism and those who have attempted to bring an element of free speech to the allegedly democratic process have been treated very harshly indeed.

Whether mysteriously falling out of hotel/hospital/apartment windows, being poisoned in curious circumstances, brazenly shot on city streets, or dying unexpectedly in custody, those who have voiced opposition to the government rarely have a long life.

Last week the Kremlin announced further crackdown measures aimed at dissenters against the war with Ukraine, barring candidates from running in the parliamentary elections in September if they show any opposition to the bloody, expensive, and increasingly unpopular military campaign.

Repression of political opponents during Putin’s tenure in charge is nothing new, but there have been times where there appeared to be rare windows of opportunity for those opposed to the war.

Just last spring the authorities appeared to create a pressure-release valve for the growing countrywide dissatisfaction with the invasion.

However, with Ukrainian drone strikes against Moscow and other cities thousands of kilometres from the battles of the Crimea and the Donbas increasing, and the economic toll becoming ever greater, hardliners in Moscow and within the security services have pushed successfully for ever-more repressive measures.

As a result, the leading opposition voice, Boris Nadezhdin, has been barred from running in the election and the liberal-leaning Yabloko Party, attempting to run under a ‘For Peace And Freedom’ slogan, has come under pressure across Russia.

Authorities in St Petersburg have refused to register Yabloko candidates for the local parliamentary elections and more than a dozen candidates have been barred from federal and regional elections.

Their crime? Allegedly they displayed “extremist symbols” such as posting photographs online of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

As ever, then, those pulling the levers of power in the Kremlin don’t like to be reminded of their wrongdoings and definitely won’t be told how to run their business.

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