Madam, – Prof Gerry Boyle (Opinion, April 20th) is right to point out that the Irish agri-food sector has enormous potential to contribute to both the economic growth and sustainable development of our economy. However, his article was disappointing as it focused in the main on known information and trends rather then set out what is required to exploit this opportunity.
The agri-food sector needs the development of an agreed medium to long term strategy accompanied by an implementation plan to take advantage of the trends and realise the potential of the sector.
I accept that the development of such a plan will not be easy as there are many contentious issues to be resolved. This is clearly demonstrated by the reaction of the ICMSA to this far from radical article.
As long as the short term issues of the current milk and beef price dominate the thinking of the sector, progress will be either non existent or very slow.
The first important step is to recognise that the current policy framework in the EU is a production containment policy designed for an era of regular world food surpluses, milk quotas being a classic example.
The future will be an era of food shortages and the policy framework needs to be changed to reflect this. Properly managed, Ireland should always have a surplus supply to meet this demand and how well we do is in our own hands.
Is it too much to hope that we have learned from our current economic problems that the short-term interests of one sector is not necessarily in the long term interests of the economy as a whole? – Yours, etc,