Mr John Dillon, leader of the Irish Farmers' Association, is taking no prisoners these days.
The European Union's enlargement must be capped at 27 member-states, otherwise it will collapse in chaos. Its budget must be increased to ensure the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is not stripped of funds. Trócaire and Oxfam damage Irish farmers by releasing misleading information on Third World development. Farmers are sick of dictats from bureaucrats about sheep tagging and environmental regulation. An Taisce must stop behaving like the colonial landlords of old by preventing farmers building new houses on their land. And as for hill walkers, they must stop assuming they have a right of access to the countryside without permission from farmers who own the land and are not mere tenants on it.
So much for Turkey and the Balkan states which hope to confirm their right of EU accession, not to mention the Poles; for misguided activists who say developing states should be given more access to EU markets; for ecologists and ordinary citizens who believe the latest CAP reform imposes obligations on farmers to preserve the rural environment; for those who say unplanned strip development will ruin the Irish countryside; and for urban dwellers and tourists who like to relax by roaming over what is left of its once glorious wildernesses.
The note of populist truculence is very much Mr Dillon's campaigning style. But he is an effective advocate and has a ready audience among IFA members. His speech this week to the organisation's annual conference in Limerick was carefully crafted to reflect its worries about an uncertain future and the agricultural sector's growing realisation that an era has changed in the new Europe as well as in a more urban and prosperous Ireland. Despite the close attention they get from political leaders and senior departmental officials there is a new defensiveness behind the assertive rhetoric.
Future gains will be made at national rather than European level, since the mid-term review of the CAP agreed last year has guaranteed farm incomes until 2014. Ireland has opted decisively for decoupling production from income, which will allow the industry adapt and rationalise over the next 10 years. World trade talks, EU budget negotiations and the forthcoming enlargement are likely to affect the good deal secured last year only marginally. But if that is so, farmers and their representatives must pay much more attention to convincing their compatriots with well-reasoned arguments as well as quarrelsome confrontations. Otherwise they will lose the goodwill of their fellow citizens and tax-payers.