Whether inside or outside farming circles, the Common Agricultural Policy remains a controversial subject. Invented to keep farming families viable in rural parts of Europe and to put a floor under a safe, traceable and secure food supply for its citizens, it has gone through many metamorphoses over the decades.

Most controversially in the 1980s and 1990s, the structure of the policy was unseemly and divisive. We had the infamous butter mountains, wine lakes and set-aside which, regardless of its misinterpretation by the non-farming public, nevertheless created a sense of disgust among them.

Various reforms followed under the next three commissioners to bring us to a situation that is a little more palatable today, whereby farmers are arguably more accountable to the European taxpayer. Of course, that means more red tape and bureaucracy for the hard-pressed farmer who is made to work within very tight margins to draw down the single farm payment and whatever other CAP-related funds are available to them.

But thanks to the likes of Agri Aware, in Ireland’s case, the general public, which funds CAP, is bit by bit becoming more educated on the aims and purpose of funding or subsidising food production to the point that there isn’t as much apathy towards it and its recipients as would have existed, say, during those butter mountain days.

However, all it takes is a fodder shortage or a price collapse to spring the farming lobby into crisis mode to test the patience of their city cousins suffering financial meltdowns of their own. How must a shopkeeper whose business collapsed during the recession feel when he sees the EU dipping into a hardship fund to dig out a farmer? It may not be comparing like with like, but it’s unpalatable all the same for any non-farming business.

It is a subject which we broached with politicians at a debate at the Ploughing Championships last week. In the past, defenders of the single farm payment have tended to flail around the place in finding a presentable answer to the question seasonably posed about the morality of subsidising farming in a European Union unable to cope with the cost of the refugee crises in the aftermath of an economic recession.

Step forward Joe Healy of the IFA, who offered one of the sounder answers when I put it to him that it must be difficult for small business owners in rural Ireland to look on helplessly as their business suffers while farmers in the marketplace can cry and receive.

He shot back that the reason many small businesses actually survive in rural Ireland is thanks to the survival of farming, which remains the heartbeat in many of these towns and communities. Good answer, Joe.

Counting the pennies

I read a few weeks ago that Manchester United had become the first English club to post half a billion pounds in revenue. Well I am not surprised. Last Saturday, I queued for a beer in the stadium at half-time in the 4-1 win over Leicester.

The cost of the small plastic bottle of lager was £4.40. I rummaged around and produced £4.30 in change. “That’s all the change I have,” I pleaded. “Sorry, 10p more or I can’t give it to you,” the seller protested. “Are you serious?” “I’m afraid so.”

With an inpatient and thirsty queue building, the kind woman next in line bailed me out. No wonder they can pay one of their subs £250,000 a week. Mind the pennies and the pounds will mind themselves at Old Trafford.