Every pot on the stove is coming to the boil…

In our house, I think my mother would have used a more domestic analogy. She’d have said that every pot on the stove was coming to the boil. Recently, Irish agriculture has seen every pot on the stove coming to the boil and smoke coming out of the oven and the microwave pinging.

What looks suspiciously like a very one-sided agreement with the US on tariffs that will put a 15 per cent tariff on our food exports to them merely puts a full stop to what has been a very depressing period for those of us trying to believe that the present Commission will ever understand their role and purpose. 

A sign of things to come

We have had the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) ‘reform’, and the parachuting in of the Habitats Directive – and now this! It’s difficult to underestimate the seriousness and downright bad faith with which farming in general has been treated by the Commission. The MFF and vaguely outlined CAP reforms should fool no-one – and they certainly don’t fool us. They are actually just a speeded-up timetable for the EU’s withdrawal of direct supports to farming and primary food production.   

That, in turn, means two things could happen. The first is that high standards and sustainable food production within the EU will fall and that the paramount importance of food security so vividly illustrated by Covid-19 has been forgotten. The second thing – and this should particularly set alarm bells ringing in Kildare Street and Brussels – is that food prices across the EU will rise as farmers are forced to seek more from the marketplace to replace the reduced supports.

Immediately after the announcement on the MFF and CAP, the ICMSA noted the simple logic that must apply: as the direct supports for farmers fall, they will have to raise prices as they sell along the chain with a resulting impact at the point of sale to the consumer. The reaction of media was interesting and highlighted the fact that, in some quarters at least, it is still expected that the farmers themselves are somehow expected to absorb these ‘hits’. 

There is an amazed reaction when farmers say – and of course the ICMSA has always said this – that they can’t afford to subsidise everyone else’s food bills. The EU Commission’s plan is now effectively open and obvious: farming and primary food production across the EU is to be market-based and the threat to our prices from sub-standard imports that are produced off unsustainable and environmentally destructive systems will simply have to be addressed. The EU would be very foolish to ignore food security, the very basis for the formation of the EU. Some people might think this is an alarmist statement, but it is actually no more than observing a fact.

Jaw dropping

In terms of the so-called simplification agenda, the fiasco of the Habitats Directive is actually worse than the announcements of so-called CAP reforms. The introduction of the Habitats Directive at this late, late stage, with just a few months to go before an expected extension of our derogation is just jaw-dropping. Just as the data and science were beginning to show water quality stabilising and slowly improving, a whole new set of protocols have been parachuted in without any coherent explanation as to how it will be applied to the 7,000 or so farmers currently operating under derogation. To say this is blatant shifting of the goalposts is to understate what was involved; the ball was in mid-air before the Commission ran in to move the goalposts – and they’re still moving! No-one seems to know what an ‘appropriate assessment’ will involve? More to the point, who’ll be carrying it out and what will be the defined standard? 

Promises

We’ve had many promises from the Commission on CAP on support and simplification. CAP and EU agriculture policy was already teetering on the brink of credibility before these announcements as the years of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ convergence and inflation ate away at any real value. July’s announcements simply underline the slide towards irrelevance in the long term. The EU can no longer even pretend to be an asset to farmers; it’s an obstacle, a negative, that causes more problems than it provides solutions. 

In its 75 years of existence, ICMSA has always prided itself on having the answers to any questions it raises. For once, we’re going to ‘park’ that tradition and just ask the question of the EU Commission: what are the implications for a typical Irish dairy or livestock farmer in terms of the financial loss under its recent proposals on CAP and nitrates and how they expect those farmers to make a living based on the Commission proposals? These are very simple questions and the Irish Government is, at the very least, either obliged to pressure the EU to answer them, or answer the questions themselves.