Another week, another six months’ worth of news. Within the last seven days, Ursula von der Leyen has signed the Mercosur agreement in Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital.

She did this before the European Parliament had the opportunity to vote to approve the deal. The Parliament, for itpart, decided to refer the Mercosur agreement to the European Court of Justice.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump arrived in Davos and proceeded to escalate and de-escalate his threats toward Greenland like a schoolyard bully toying with a smaller child over their lunch money.

And Donald’s sometime sidekick Elon Musk threatened a takeover of Ryanair over a spat with Michael O’Leary.

Closer to home, we had the revelation that Dawn Farm Foods uses Brazilian beef. Its CEO Larry Murrin is chair of Bord Bia. All farm organisations, Sinn Féin and others have called for him to resign, but the Bord board backed Murrin.

By my count, that’s four Mexican stand-offs - between the president of the European Commission and the Parliament; between Donald Trump and Denmark, the free world and the rules of international law; between the world’s richest man and Westmeath’s richest beef farmer; and between Bord Bia, its chair and the farm organisations that represent the food producers of Ireland.

It's exhausting. It’s almost overwhelming. January is supposed to be a quiet month, as we ease ourselves into the new year. The days are short, but growing a little longer as we move through the month, calving begins and farmers get busy as the month progresses, but this is all too much for many of us.

Davos is normally an anodyne affair, as the great and the good, self-selected, gather in the small Swiss town for the World Economic Forum.

We see news reports of politicians, businessman, bankers and economists, mostly engulfed in a circle of smugness, make grand pronouncements on how the world will be or should be. Most of the attendees have never had to worry about meeting the bills at the end of the month. Most who started with humble beginnings have forgotten any lessons they might have learned from their earlier days.

I don’t like Davos

As you may have gathered, I don’t like Davos. I’ve never been, but the air of entitlement wafts from the television screen whenever it is featured.

Full confession - I’m hugely conflicted about Switzerland as a nation. Fiercely independent and very affluent, it has been a beacon at times in its’ history.

Last month, I watched the Sound of Music at least twice, as I do every Christmas. And at the end, as the von Trapp family hike up the Alps to escape the Nazi regime in Austria, it’s to Switzerland they go.

Except the truth is less poetic. The von Trapp family escaped to London via Italy in 1938, taking the train out of Austria.

And Switzerland had a chequered history through World War II. Ireland is often derided for its neutrality and in particular for Eamon de Valera’s insistence on maintaining diplomatic niceties with the German ambassador, even after Hitler was dead and the full extent of the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people of Europe was apparent. But Ireland’s neutrality was well loaded toward the Allies.

Switzerland - bordered by Germany, Italy, annexed Austria and occupied France - was in a much more precarious position than Ireland.

It had the natural defences of the mountains for much of its border and had a significant army of 600,000. And it did take in hundreds of thousands of refugees up to 1942.

While they had little choice but to trade with Nazi Germany or face invasion, the refusal of Swiss banks to release Nazi loot for decades has always coloured my view of the country.

I spent some time there during the ill-fated World Trade Organisation talks of 2008. It really is a beautiful country - I was based in Geneva, and it is stunning.

But there is a massive contradiction between Swiss society, which is one of the most progressive and egalitarian in the world, and the secretive banking system that underpins its affluence. Dirty money from despots and gangsters from every corner of the world has flowed through Swiss banks over the centuries.

Of course, Switzerland is far from the only place in the world where dirty money accumulates. The UK launders nearly 40% of the world’s dirty money according to its own government in 2024. This mainly occurs through offshore tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands and the Caymen Islands.

Anyone remember the Ansbacher funds? Look them up it if you don’t - Ireland is far from immune to money laundering by the most privileged in society. The recent additions to these undistinguished ranks are the likes of Dubai and Hong Kong.

If we didn’t have secret banks willing to take dirty money, the criminal acts of those whose gains are ill-gotten would be much easier to identify.

What’s the point for farmers

Does any of this have anything to do with farming? It does for me. Not because I believe that the World Economic Forum is at the heart of some secret order running the world, as many on the fringes would have you believe. It all takes place in public, there is no secret.

But Davos is an annual reveal of the sense of entitlement that runs through many in authority. The type of entitlement that sees von der Leyen disrespect the Parliament as she did.

The type of entitlement that means Donald Trump can pretend a treaty signed by Woodrow Wilson a century ago has no standing because he wants Greenland, treating international sovereignty with the same disdain he has shown for the rule of law in his own country.

And there's a disconnect that borders on entitlement for Bord Bia's board and CEO to completely disregard farmer feeling regarding its chair. Farmers believe his position is untenable - the IFA and the ICMSA said so and voted accordingly in the boardroom, but everyone else stood by their man.

Optics and compliance

Of course, it’s largely about optics, but optics matter. Every year, most farmers in Ireland are visited by someone in the name of Bord Bia, carrying a clipboard with an exhaustive list of items to check off.

The Quality Assurance Scheme is the jewel in the crown of Irish farming, the point of separation for our produce. It is quite demanding of farmers, with the list of compliance points seeming to get a ratchet up every year.

For Irish farmers, Bord Bia is experienced not in trade shows in Beijing, Bostin or Berlin - it happens in their own yards, fields and kitchens. And for them to hear that the chair of Bord Bia is CEO of an Irish meat processor that uses Brazilian beef is triggering.

Some context is required. In 2025, only 145 tonnes (t) of Brazilian beef was imported into Ireland. It’s a tiny amount when you consider over one and a half million animals were slaughtered in Ireland last year. Dawn Farm Foods, by its own statement, says that only 1% of its beef in 2025 was Brazilian.

It also said that Brazilian beef was a fallback option, in case issues ever arose with their normal supply. This is a prudent plan B - we’ve had a few significant disruptions to processing over the last decade or so.

The first was the horsemeat scandal in 2013. Dawn Farm Foods had no role in this debacle, but it was disruptive to beef supply lines for a period.

This issue was completely the fault of processors and was the point where farmers openly wondered if there weren’t massive double standards pertaining regarding oversight in the beef supply chain, with all the compliance loaded on their side of the farm gate.

Then we had the disruption caused by the blockade began by the Beef Plan in 2019. Processors would say that this one was completely down to farmers, the farmers who manned the gates would say they were driven to it.

But since then, there has been no disruption to the beef processing. Indeed, when COVID-19 led to lockdown in 2020, beef and other meat processing were designated as essential services and continued more normally than most other economic activities.

Perhaps the question Larry Murrin has to answer to farmers is, if Brazilian beef is the 'in case of emergency please break the glass' option, why was any Brazilian beef required in 2025?

Why should Larry Murrin have to answer to farmers at all? He has the backing of his board, although not from either of the two farmer representatives on that board. He has the backing of Bord Bia’s CEO. He has the backing of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Agriculture as well.

But here’s the thing. The farmers of Ireland are ultimately the clients of Bord Bia’s Quality Assurance Scheme. They are the ones who deliver the Q mark to the vast majority of our beef, which allows Bord Bia to market Irish meat as best in class.

The immediate beneficiaries of this status are the processors who sell most of their meat abroad. Processors will point out, entirely validly, that it’s in farmers' own interests that they get the best price possible, allowing them to pass back a better beef price.

But if farmers on the ground have no confidence in the chair of Bord Bia, that is a problem. And I have rarely had as much contact from farmers over a single issue as I have on this one over the last few days. So Larry Murrin needs to come forward and speak to farmers.

The people who will suffer if he chooses not to will be those who drive into farmers’ yards to carry out inspections. They will be the ones getting it in the neck from farmers. People have been telling me they will refuse an inspection as things stand.

It might all blow over, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way right now.

Trump and Greenland

What response should Europe make to Donald Trump demanding that Denmark hand over Greenland?

Ursula von der Leyen has been craven in her dealings with the US president and his administration over the last 12 months. The Irish Government has been circumspect in confronting the reality of US aggression, in sharp contrast to its willingness to call out the wrongdoings of Russia or Israel.

Perhaps the most toe-curling moment came when FIFA president Gianni Infantino (a Swiss man leading a global organisation based in Switzerland) presented Donald Trump with a made-up peace award.

I know that Ireland and the EU as a whole are economically very dependent on the United States, but here’s the thing; appeasing a bully only emboldens them.

I utterly agree with California Governor Gavin Newsom and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney when they say Europe needs to challenge Donald Trump every time he flagrantly disregards international law (both speaking at Davos - it’s not a useless forum, but it is an entitled one).

I’m not just saying that now, I said it last April. When Donald Trump revealed his tariffs board on the White House lawn, I predicted that trade aggression was the second of a three-phase strategy. First had come diplomatic aggression, then followed trade aggression and the third phase would be military aggression.

We’re seeing that now and while it’s late in the day for Europe to show testicular fortitude, better late than never.

It’s probably an inappropriate phrase to use, because the one European leader who has stood up to Trump is a woman - Italian PM Georgia Meloni. Dubbed far-right when elected, she has shown herself to be a much more complex political operator and a rather impressive one.

In brief, the same option that existed then is still available to Europe. There is a potential, fairly obvious coalition of democratic nations that could combine to dwarf US economic might. They include Japan and South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, the EU and the UK, Canada and Mexico, and, yes, Brazil and the Mercosur countries.

Well over a billion people, this alliance could literally buy and sell the US. They need to come together while there is still time and let Donald Trump know that his strategy of divide and conquer won’t work anymore.

Threaten Greenland and every one of these countries will impose punitive tariffs on the US. Trump will back down or he will break his country. Such a strategy will involve economic pain, but the march of autocracy must be confronted.

You can read that earlier article here.

I stand over every word of it.