After months of deliberation and debate within the farming community, the Coalition Government has decided that the reforms of the Common Agriculture Policy, proposed by EU Commissioner, Dr Franz Fischler, are as good as they will get.
Not alone will the proposed changes work to the financial benefit of a majority of Irish farmers, but consumers can expect to be supplied with higher quality produce and the environment will benefit from lower levels of air and water pollution.
The Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, announced acceptance of the reform package yesterday, following agreement at Saturday's Cabinet meeting. Mr Walsh handled the matter well. He secured important clarifications to the initial Fischler proposals; resisted the knee-jerk reaction to change by some farming interests and organised an educational campaign, based on cold, statistical evidence, at local level.
Some of the largest, commercial producers of beef stand to lose money. There will be a knock-on effect within the processing industry as cattle and sheep numbers fall. But an analysis conducted by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Unit of Teagasc has shown that a full decoupling of farm production from direct EU payments will benefit the great majority of farmers. Aggregate income is expected to rise by 10 per cent before 2012. A partial decoupling, sought by commercial producers and processors, would only generate a 4 per cent increase in income. And a "no change" policy would see farm incomes fall by 9 per cent.
Last week, the Minister welcomed the Teagasc analysis and said it would inform the Government's decision. His caution was understandable, given the pressures being applied by IBEC, the Irish Meat Association and the ICMSA. But it was an open-and-shut case. The interests of small and medium sized farmers had to be accorded their proper weight, especially as they coincided with overall economic interests.
Irish agriculture had become overly-dependent on production subsidies and intervention storage. Quality beef production suffered while the focus remained on animal headage payments. Huge amounts of butter were put into storage. These CAP reforms offer an opportunity to adapt to new market realities and to concentrate on added-value products.
An estimated drop of 18 per cent in the number of suckler cows and 20 per cent for sheep will remove millions of animals and reduce agriculture-based greenhouse gas emissions to below the targets set out in Kyoto. Those changes will impact positively on upland erosion; help to improve water quality and facilitate development within the industrial sector because of their positive contribution to carbon emissions. Agriculture is our single most important industry. The agri-food sector employs one-in-eight people in the workforce and it generates about one-third of net foreign earnings. The opportunities offered by these CAP reforms must not be missed.