DEAR SIR: First it must be said that the EU has been an absolute godsend to this country.

My problem is that we have always had a strongly imbued relationship with the small farmer. The small farming communities, without exaggeration, are and always have been the Irish countryside. This has been the origin of so many of our great writers and our cultural and historical background.

The difficulty today is that the policy of organising the market for farmers to produce cheap food and reimbursing them through subsidy is a very lopsided affair.

I know efficiency is supposed to be the modern god but the assumption is that big farmers are efficient and small not. This is patent rubbish

The first time a civil service has been directed to interfere in the agricultural market in world history, in this case only a partially successful experiment, and the result is that many small farmers are being literally driven off the land. I know efficiency is supposed to be the modern god but the assumption is that big farmers are efficient and small not. This is patent rubbish.

The point I am coming to is that the single farm payment, with its emphasis on big farmers, is seriously interfering with our cultural background. Is this a good thing? Do we want to see our countryside, particularly in the poorer areas, denuded of these communities because it is going that way fast?