Sir, – The Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed the shortcomings of the EU common agriculture and food security policy under which heavily subsidised and over-productive Irish dairy farms were importing Russian grain to feed their cows in order to export surplus milk in the form of powder to China.
If, instead of pouring billions into the dairy sector, they had spread the grants more evenly over all the farming sectors, we would not find ourselves in the present situation where totally overstocked dairy farmers are facing a huge shortage in their fodder requirements and where the Minister for Agriculture is now reduced to pleading with these same farmers to grow cereals on their farms to make up for this fodder shortfall due to the war in Ukraine. – Yours, etc,
CHARLES SMYTH,
Kells,
Co Meath.
Sir, – It is a little odd to see the Government taking feeble steps to increase wheat production by Irish farmers. If extra wheat production was uneconomic last year, it is difficult to see why farmers should gamble on its being profitable next year. Only extra subsidies would overcome the risk and these would surely be banned under EU law.
Food security became a concern for politicians for about five minutes during the height of the Covid epidemic. We were told then that Ireland had almost no flour mills, that we import nearly all of our wheat from the UK. How would this extra wheat enhance our food security if we have no flour mills and are forbidden by EU law from subsidising any new ones? We are learning the hard way that globalisation has some very scary consequences, that its proponents always dismissed as scare-mongering when opponents made these obvious simple objections. We have already seen the horrible effects of the lack of any capacity to make vaccines in Africa. When the going gets tough, no sovereign nation can safely rely on other countries to give them vaccines or to feed them if those other countries have unmet needs at home. – Yours, etc,
TIM O’HALLORAN,
Dublin 11.