The president of the Agricultural Science Association (ASA) has told farmers it would be wrong to relate their current income difficulties to the long-term strategic decision on enlarging the EU.
Mr Sean Gaule, the outgoing president, told the ASA's annual conference at Citywest, outside Dublin, that while the frustration of some farmers, due to current income difficulties, was understandable, a rejection of the Nice Treaty would do incalculable damage to Ireland's economy and to our future in Europe.
Dr Edward Walsh, the former president of the University of Limerick, said US multinationals had been the key driving force for the creation of Ireland's economic success.
However, our success was fragile because costs in Ireland had increased and reduced our competitiveness.
"If multinationals were to drift away one by one to more cost-effective locations, Ireland's economic prospects would once more be bleak indeed," he warned.
Dr Walsh, who is chairman of the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, said that in truth our success was based on manufacturing other people's ideas. This had worked in the past but would not sustain us or keep the multinationals in the future.
"We must establish Ireland as a choice location in Europe for research and the generation of future knowledge-age products," he told the conference.
He said the major commitment to research given by the Government in the National Development Plan was already beginning to have an impact by attracting some of the best research minds to Ireland and by giving vital support to Irish researchers.
Whether the EU was enlarged or not, CAP reform was inevitable.
"Subsidies to agriculture will be radically reduced and farming will become a highly competitive activity," he said.
"Creative new tourism products and the development of e-towns, with advanced broadband capacity and a quality environment, will be key instruments in sustaining rural areas," he said.
Mr Jim Flanagan, the director of Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, predicted that the changes in the CAP, EU enlargement and the outcome of World Trade negotiations would bring major changes for the agriculture and food industry.
He predicted the trend towards fewer and larger farms would continue, as well as the divergence of agriculture into a commercial "full-time" farming sector and a much larger "part-time" farming sector involving rural dwellers with multiple sources of income.
"It is envisaged that by 2015 Ireland will have less than 20,000 commercial full-time farmers and perhaps up to 40,000 part-time farmers, mostly livestock producers," he said.
By Sean Mac Connell,
Agriculture Correspondent
THE fact that 800 million people in the world do not have enough to eat represented political, economic and policy failure on a massive scale, the chief executive of Concern Worldwide, Mr Tom Arnold, has said.
Addressing the conference, Mr Arnold said that improved agricultural policy, while vitally important, was only part of the answer.
"Progress has to be made in relation to conflict prevention and resolution, governance, and AIDS and education, and investment in these areas will require substantial increases in aid flows."
He said the international trading system for agricultural products needed to be changed in order to provide fairer trading arrangement for developing countries.
"This will require developed countries being willing to reduce the support and export subsidy levels to their agricultural sectors and increasing access to their markets."
He called for a strategic shift in Irish aid policy, with a greater emphasis within the Irish aid programme on assisting increased agricultural productivity and food production in developing countries.
"This shift should involve a willingness to accept a more liberalised Common Agricultural Policy and more access for imported agricultural products from developing countries," he said.
"This would also mean investment in assisting the Irish agricultural and rural sector prepare for further structural change.
"The combination of these policy shifts is in the long-term interest of the Irish economy and the agricultural sector," he said.
The ASA conference held a special function to mark the centenary of the faculty of agriculture at University College Dublin, which was established in 1902.
The dean of the faculty of agriculture at the college, Prof Joseph Mannion, said that since 1926, some 5,500 people had graduated with the bachelor of agricultural science degree.
Of this number, he said, 1,650, or 30 per cent, obtained their primary degree in agriculture during the last decade.