SUSTAINABILITY Modern farming needs joined-up thinking

Modern farming needs joined-up thinking


Growing your own
Chris Brown

Just the other week at the Network Ireland Conference in Westport, ‘celebrity economist’ David McWilliams told those listening that we should be ‘very optimistic’ about the West of Ireland’s two industries, agriculture and tourism. His glib claim that ‘the west has it all’ when speaking of the food industry is easy to put about, but he is talking through his trousers, and what he has to say has little value.
Most ventures needed to make a success out of producing food are missing from Maigh Eo. Five of the seven marts (livestock trading buildings) have been closed down – as have all the abattoirs in the area I farm.
We don’t have a trade market in – nor established trade routes to – the city, and the trains won’t carry our goods. The price of animal feed, medicines and raw materials has increased, whilst the prices paid to farmers have remained stagnant for over 20 years. Milk, which has nearly vanished on a small production scale from the county lanes, is being paid for at about 23c a litre – that’s about 12p a pint in old money, a pitiful amount. I’m sure most people realise the huge levels of commitment and hard work it takes to milk cows every day!
And then there are regulations; lots of them and many of them needless…
Economists – like the European Commission’s Martin Territt, who was also enjoying the conference at Westport’s beautiful Knockranny House Hotel – should be aware that the farmers, who don’t themselves get many invites to conferences, were driving their tractors into Castlebar in protest that same week because the West actually ‘doesn’t have it all’ in the food industry, and that it badly needs an overhaul.
Talk of great optimism from slick ‘city suits’ may earn them a well-paid time of things, but it’s doing nothing for declining farms and farming incomes.
Economists are supposed to know about money (look what a balls-up they’ve made of that!); the study into the future of farming will need more pragmatic people than these.

Agriculture’s obligation
Farmers today face many challenges, and all of them must be dealt with in a way that leaves the land in at least as good a condition to that in which it was found. This is the very cornerstone of sustainability. It’s up to us to make sure we do not damage the soil so that the next generation will have the same opportunities we do. However, new perils face the modern farmer.
Invasive plants – like the giant rhubarb that chokes Achill Island particularly badly; Japanese Knotweed, that’s carelessly transported about and now covering much of the verge; and the Rhododendron, that handsome choker of grassland – need sorting. So does the spread of mink through the laneways and streams. My friend tells me he is now losing lambs to this tough little invader who terrifies the keepers of poultry;  the mink is a deadly killer if it gets inside the hen shed.
The need to improve the soil was never greater, and we have to attract people to farming, yet incentives to farm land are steadily being withdrawn by EU/Irish government policies that just don’t stack up. Less and less people are working the land, yet regulations forced upon us from afar are making it increasingly difficult to make a go of things. We badly need people to start growing more food, yet somehow we can’t even seem to manage a collection of compostible material from households that’s currently thrown to the landfill site.
Modern farming will need some serious joined-up thinking.
Research is needed.