One of the best folk tales in Irish agriculture which illustrates the benefits of EU membership concerns the use of Irish butter in the 1960s. It was claimed that the butter was widely sought after in north Africa - not for eating but for greasing the wheels of carts.
Entry to the EU has transformed the Irish countryside from those days, bringing the country out of a "Victorian" era to what it is now.
The most visible change is the many farm buildings which now surround virtually every farmstead. They fill a once empty landscape.
In the early 1970s, the average Irish farmer had few outbuildings, at most a haybarn and a byre. He sold his milk to the local creamery at world prices and the rest of his stock was sold through fairs and marts for the British market which was nearly our sole customer.
The first EU transfers came in 1973 when Irish farmers received £37.1 million in direct aid. By 1978, this had increased tenfold to £365 million.
This came to farmers through the first of the major EU schemes, the Farm Modernisation Scheme, where the farmer drew up a programme to develop his holding.
It was the era when farming ceased to be a way of life but became more business-focused. Those who wanted to stay in business joined up. Those who did not, went to the wall.
Farmers can trace the development of their farms back to these years. Most were able to build outhouses to winter their animals and to buy machinery to work more efficiently.
Most farmers will tell you that it was during the 1970s that they built a new family home. The new bungalow replaced the old farmhouse. Irish butter was no longer greasing the wheels of African carts - it was being purchased into intervention stores, giving farmers a guaranteed price for their produce.
The same was true of beef. No longer had farmers to bring animals home unsold from marts. The beef intervention stores in Europe took surplus beef off the market and prices remained stable.
By 1985, direct transfers to farmers had grown to £836 million and farmers were receiving a ewe premium to prop up the sheep sector. A new scheme was in place for farmers called the Farm Improvement Programme. This was superseded by the Control of Farmyard Pollution Scheme, 1989/1994.
In 1990, as the number of farmers fell to 120,000, the level of support from the EU crossed the £1 billion mark. However, pressure from abroad, especially from the US, was being brought on the EU and it fell to an Irishman, Mr Ray MacSharry, to reform the Common Agricultural Policy.
The US demanded that the EU cut supports to farmers because it claimed the aid was distorting world trade. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was concluded in 1992 and the Common Agricultural Policy was dramatically reformed.
Mr MacSharry shifted the supports away from farm produce to the farmer in an effort to circumvent the GATT rules and that policy has remained in place to this day. The farmers who built up their holdings in the 1970s were now being offered a chance to retire at 55 in the so-called "accompanying measures" which came with CAP reform.
Mr MacSharry's greatest legacy will perhaps be the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, under which farmers enter into a contract to farm in an environmentally-sensitive way. Nearly 30,000 farmers have joined this scheme which satisfies the criteria demanded by the GATT agreement but brings money directly to the farm from Brussels.
By 1996, the direct payments had grown to almost £1.5 billion. The number of farmers continued to decline, with a loss of over 4,000 each year.
This year, some 42 per cent of income Irish farmers receive comes in the post. The majority of farmers, especially those involved in beef and sheep production, could not survive without these payments.
Farmers are now being asked to prepare themselves to produce at world prices - in a sense to step back 25 years to pre-EEC days. But the difference now is that they will continue to be compensated and 25 years of infrastructure have been put in place.
