The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, has defended new policies aimed at keeping farmers on the land. These were drawn up following a forecast that the number of people working in agriculture would decline by almost a third over the next 10 years.
At an Agricultural Science Association conference in Limerick yesterday, Mr Walsh said he envisaged the agri-food sector would offer farm families attractive and sustainable livelihoods, "thus ensuring the maintenance of the maximum number on the land".
A recent report by the Agri-Food 2010 committee predicted the number of farmers would decline from 146,000 today to 100,000, only 20,000 of whom would be full-time. However, Mr Walsh said much of the comment on that report had been based on "a misinterpretation of tentative and conditional estimates".
"The Government's objective is to ensure that the highest possible number of full-time farms are retained," he said. Farm families would be "proactively" supported in decisions they made on their future, while the growing economy offered attractive off-farm job opportunities.
The National Development Plan and the 200-Point Action Plan for Agriculture and Rural Development, drawn up as a result of the report, would realise the objective "to maintain farming as the backbone of a vibrant rural economy" and the basis of a quality food industry.
In the keynote speech to the conference, Mr Tassos Haniotis, a member of the cabinet of the EU Commissioner of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the EU was committed to a market-oriented agricultural policy. This did not imply an abandonment of support for the agricultural sector "but a shift in the manner by which this support is provided". The direct-payment systems were a more targeted and less distorting agricultural and rural policy than the price-support system.
The president of the Agricultural Science Association, Mr Donal Mullane, said that while GMO (genetically modified organisms) technology had very obvious benefits to food producers, more attention needed to be directed towards consumers. "Scientists will need to show patience for the consumer; they will need to listen to their concerns and fears and embark on a steady course of education and transparency for consumers who are rapidly becoming more sophisticated than heretofore."
Prof Michael Gibney, of the department of clinical medicine at Trinity College Dublin, said the fear of GM foods would diminish as the public embraced "the self-empowering effect of molecular medicine".