THE latest crisis to face Irish agriculture is Blue Ear, which has been described as the pig equivalent of Aids.
Thirty three outbreaks have been reported in Northern Ireland so far this year, overwhelming a public veterinary service already working flat out to control Newcastle Disease in the province's poultry flocks. Although such diseases have to be expected if animals are reared in intensive industrial units, EU rules prevent the Irish Government banning pig imports from the North. Consequently, unless the industry introduces the voluntary ban it is considering, it is almost inevitable that Blue Ear will spread into the large pig units in Co Cavan. There it will cause poorer food conversion, lower growth rates, infertility and spontaneous abortions.
Moreover, because it damages the pig's immune system, it will increase the incidence of other diseases too, and thus the routine use of antibiotics and other drugs. Again we are forced to ask ourselves, What can we safely eat?
Blue Ear is just the latest example - as if one were needed - of how the industrialisation of agriculture over the past fifty years has been a disaster for all concerned. For the consumer, the process has meant food so chemically contaminated that it is linked with the decline in male fertility. For the environment, it has meant fish kills, polluted lakes and rivers, the loss of flower rich pastures and the decline in numbers of many insects and birds. For some farm families, it has meant selling up and leaving the land, while for others it has meant working under almost intolerable pressures. For livestock, the consequences are stress and disease. Only machinery manufacturers and agrochemical companies can show substantial gains.
Graham Harvey's well researched book documents the damage agricultural industrialisation has done in the British countryside, to wildlife, to the land and also to the people. Quoting disturbing statistics in almost every paragraph, he blames much of what happened on the continuation of a price support system designed to maximise food production in wartime.
He argues that if farmers had had to manage without guaranteed prices, they would never have risked putting all their eggs in one basket and becoming totally dependent on a single crop. Instead, they would have stayed with the four course rotation and the rest of the system of mixed farming which created the British countryside so that, if the price of one crop dropped, they could make it up on the others.
Harvey, the agricultural story editor of The Archers, is particularly good on the way that the existence of subsidies has pushed up land prices and thus made it imperative for farmers to use every last corner of their land.
As a result, 150,000 miles of hedges have been lost in Britain since subsidies were introduced and they are still being ripped out at a rate of 10,000 miles a year. Water meadows, moorland, marshes and wetland, all with their own distinctive flora and fauna, have also been converted to arable for financial reason's, only to produce surpluses no one wants. Attempting to restrict the over supply by quotas and set aside - which essentially amount to further subsidies - does little to make good the environmental losses, particularly if the farming, effort on the remaining land gets even more intense.
As the specialisation produced by subsidies has enabled farms to be worked with much less labour, the taxpayers support for British farming has led to fewer agricultural jobs. It has also meant fewer farmers since there are fewer, but bigger, farms. Today, half of all British milk is produced by only 6,000 herds, sold to just six processors, and distributed by three retailers.
Following this theme of concentration, Harvey quotes land ownership statistics to show how people have been dispossessed of the countryside, even if they still live there. In Britain as a whole, one per cent of the population own 50 per cent of the land, and two per cent have 75 per cent of it. In Scotland, however, the polarisation is much worse. A mere 600 people own half the whole country.
His solution is the complete removal of price supports and subsidies on the lines New Zealand followed after 1984. There, he claims, despite the pain of readjustment, very few existing farmers were forced to leave the land and, as land prices dropped, it became easier for young people to start.
"Lurid predictions of imminent rural collapse failed to materialise," he writes. "The reforms brought immediate and lasting benefits. Lower returns encouraged farmers to adopt less intensive production methods. Fewer fertilisers and pesticides were applied. Overall, there is now less specialisation, with a much reduced area of monoculture. The landscape is more attractive with a greater diversity of wildlife."
Since all the damaging distortions detailed in Harvey's book affect Irish agriculture, it is certainly relevant here. He writes with passion and anger, leaving the reader bruised, but he makes a totally convincing, case.