Vegetable producers, who are facing a serious crisis because of wet weather, have asked for a meeting with supermarket owners this week to seek higher prices.
The growers estimate that already half the lettuce and cauliflower crops in north Co Dublin have been lost because of the weather and there are also serious problems facing potato growers.
Mr P.J. Jones, the Irish Farmers Association national field vegetable marketing co-ordinator, said he expected the output from the sector over the next few weeks would be half of normal.
"The growers are tied by price to the multiples and we will be seeking some sort of help in terms of price to get us through this year," he said.
"Most of the early growers, especially in north Co Dublin, which supplies more than half of the crops to the Irish market, rely on these few weeks to make their living," he said.
"That window has now been closed and we are seeking some kind of help. Otherwise, it will be like 1993 when one-third of the growers went out of business."
Mr Jones said the growers did not want to see consumers paying more for their vegetables because of the shortage because they relied so heavily on the Irish market.
"We don't want to kill the golden goose but we have to survive and we will be asking for increased margins to help us get over this bad period," he said.
Mr Jones said suppliers of early potatoes to the Irish market were unable to gain access to their crops to get them to the markets and the scarcity of home-grown early crops was creating difficulties in the market.
"But this is a long-term problem because I have spoken to main-crop potato growers and they tell me the seed is rotting in the ground and that potato blight has already started," he said.
He explained that with more wet weather forecast farmers would be unable to spray their crops against blight and this would lead to a fall in yields in the main crop later in the year.
Similar problems are being experienced in the cereals sector where Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority, warned at the weekend of a serious drop in yields because many crops had not been sprayed for nearly three weeks.Farmers need at least two dry days to apply sprays.
There are also serious problems with the silage harvest, which is now running a fortnight behind normal.