DEAR SIR: It has come to my attention that I am no longer an avid reader of the Irish Farmers Journal. I buy it every week, as any serious commercial farmer should, but I now find myself in the miserable position that I am too busy and no longer have the time to read it. In the last 20 odd years, I have grown my business significantly, which to-date I was proud of. But I now see myself as nothing more than a farm labourer. We always had staff on our farm, but in recent times have found it extremely difficult to find competent workers. The good guys and gals are few and far between and even if you could find one, is our industry still profitable enough to pay them? Static commodity prices at the farm gate means we are no longer strong payers in the jobs department. The clear lack of ambition on milk and beef prices by our co-ops and meat processors is staggering. Any industry that keeps proclaiming you have to become more efficient and build scale to remain profitable to me is short-sighted and quickly running out of road. A very dangerous assumption is that the industry knows what’s best for farmers. We are getting busier for less, putting more strain on ourselves, our farms, our precious time and taking on more and higher levels of debt. In my younger days travelling across European farms and especially France, one could note significantly less ambitious farmers, but I am now envious of their quality of life. We as farmers have to take stock of our industry. There are now more dairy cows in Ireland per sq km than there are in New Zealand. Once again being cynical, we are being fed a specific agenda and being overworked to the point we no longer have time inform ourselves – similar to mushrooms being kept in the dark. We as farmers need to take stock of things before we become financially overstretched, old before our time, with dodgy knees and hips. It is up to us to set the agenda. The industry may not have our best interest at heart.

Yours sincerely, Ill-informed Mushroom.

ADVERTISEMENT