As this week progresses, the focus is on Brussels and the various elements being discussed that will affect farmers, their families and their living standards. But even when the Brussels talks conclude, the focus will switch to Dublin as the Minister and Department of Agriculture grapple with the new discretion given to the national capitals in deciding how EU money should be allocated among farmers.

This is bound to be a thankless task, with the winners from policies such as convergence naturally seeing any gain as no more than their due, while the losers will see it as the confiscation of their hard-earned entitlements based on compensation for price reductions in their products.

Greening element

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The imposition of a flat greening element replacing the 30% payment at the full entitlement value will add to the irritation among farmers who invested on their farms to grow their output over the years.

What we are seeing, of course, is a withdrawal of policy from production supports and encouragement to one purely focused on environmental outcomes, praise worthy as these might be.

The original small but symbolically important items such as free or State-aided soil testing and lime application have disappeared, as has the Exchequer-funded fallen animal scheme, brought in to prevent on-farm burial of dead animals.

All of these changes are an implicit reminder that with present levels of feed imports, Europe has more than enough food for its population and so the focus has shifted.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the uncosted Green Deal with targets for reductions in plant protection products and fertiliser use apparently plucked out of the air.

The winners from policies such as convergence naturally seeing any gain as no more than their due, while the losers will see it as the confiscation of their hard-earned entitlements based on compensation for price reductions in their products

From an Irish farmer’s point of view, the emphasis will have to shift to achieving real support for the other aims of the Green Deal – on-farm energy production, anaerobic digestion and the recycling of manures, digestates and byproducts from the food processing and dairy industry, as well as measures to help farmer producer groups, etc.

So far, it has all been threats with a visible absence of real incentives to achieve policy changes.

On Tuesday, I was fascinated to hear former Commissioner Franz Fischler at a conference hosted by the European Landowners Organisation suggest that the extra carbon sequestered by trees and stored in soils should be able to be included in the internationally recognised emissions trading scheme.

A development along these lines would incentivise farmers to adopt carbon friendly farming techniques and present European farming in an new and positive light.

The measurement techniques are now developed – what is needed is the political will to ensure that the income gets to the farmer producers.