2010 The starting point

The decade began with some issues that still remain to the forefront across our front pages.

For starters there was the weather, with the freeze-out that began in December continuing right through into February.

Harsh weather gave rise to serious fodder crises on farms in both 2013 and 2018, leading to the unprecedented import of fodder into Ireland.

Beef price was topical early in the decade, with the newly introduced quality assurance payment and beef price grid not finding universal favour. Newly appointed IFA president John Bryan was saying that the problem wasn’t with the grid itself, but with the base price, which was too low. In May, he led a large protest against the Mercosur trade talks, fearing an onslaught of Brazilian beef imports.

Prices were poor across the board. We ran a story in February that spoke of a €100/t base price for spring barley being offered by Liffey Mills to offer certainly to tillage farmers.

Milk price was rising too, following an awful 2009 where it had averaged just 24c. It would average 30c/l in 2010, as incomes rebounded from the 2009 average of under €12,000.

The two biggest dairy processors were making moves. Kerry bought Newmarket, while Glanbia Co-op’s proposed buy-out of the Irish business narrowly failed.

The big story in dairying, of course, was the ending of quotas announced little more than a year earlier. Ireland was just waking up to the possibilities this would bring.

The early years: from CAP reform to the horsemeat crisis

CAP reform was a recurring theme through the first half of the decade. Our first front page on CAP came in January 2010 when Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith pledged that Ireland would oppose flat payments.

The reforms proposed by European Commissioner for Agriculture Dacian Ciolos emerged in November, and proposed those very flat payments.

We reported on the marathon battle that ensued, with the Irish government central to the battle that opposed the Commission.

Compromise

Under the chairmanship of Simon Coveney, the EU’s agriculture ministers agreed a compromise package. The IFA’s involvement in that campaign divided opinion among its members, with many in the west supportive of flat payments.

Peter Young provided a weekly report for almost three years on this saga – essential reading at the time – and a remarkable record for posterity now.

Food Harvest 2020 was launched in 2010, providing a blueprint for the coming decade.

Phil Hogan became the second Irish Commissioner for Agriculture in November 2014. He oversaw the promised end to dairy quotas the following May. Ireland had already been cranking up production, with a hefty superlevy in the last year of quotas, the final kick to farmers from the 30-year stranglehold.

January 2013 brought the horsemeat crisis, damaging the reputation of beef processing.

Farmers and factories fell out in late 2014, as protests eventually led to the formation of the Beef Forum to allow direct dialogue.

2015: IFA in chaos

Rumblings and discord within the IFA had been in evidence through 2015. A motion of no confidence in general secretary Pat Smith in January failed, but issues around pay were raised as the year drew to a close. When former deputy president Derek Deane alleged on RTÉ’s Drivetime programme that Smith’s pay level was in the region of €400,000, events spiralled out of control.

Smith resigned the next day, and president Eddie Downey also resigned a week later. There was blanket coverage in the national media of all-night meetings and the subsequent highly charged election, which saw Joe Healy emerge as president.

For the Irish Farmers Journal, the buzz of being close to the biggest story in the country was tempered by the difficulty of writing objectively and critically about people we knew and liked on a personal basis, many of them volunteer farmers not on huge remuneration (a word we all learned to understand).

2016 to today: the B-word

The last third of the decade has been dominated by Brexit, following the June 2016 decision of a British referendum to leave the EU. Newly appointed Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed had to wrestle with the consequences for Ireland.

Michael Creed explaining the Government's Brexit strategy - again.

With the British withdrawal at last on the horizon, we have one more year of “normal” trade with our closest neighbour, and most important market, while a trade deal is negotiated. That could take up to the next 10 years. The beef sector has been worst affected, and the last 12 months have seen protests and pickets at factory gates and in Dublin, as farmers fall out with processors and each other. Mercosur has finally happened, despite all the Irish opposition. In dairying, Glanbia has had a difficult year after a decade of remarkable growth, and Kerry has just narrowly failed to conclude what would have been the biggest Irish agri-food deal of all time acquiring DuPont. Dairy output has increased by 50% in five years – it has definitely been dairy’s decade.

The decade also saw change at the Irish Farmers Journal. We began with Matt Dempsey as editor. He stepped down in 2013, the same year we lost his predecessor Paddy O’Keeffe, who Matt would succeed as chair of the Agricultural Trust. Justin McCarthy took over the reins as editor.

We lost many wonderful people in farming over the decade, far too many of them due to farm accidents. An iconic Irish Farmers Journal front page in July 2014 highlighted the 176 farm fatalities that occurred in the previous 10 years. There has definitely been an increased focus on farm safety during the decade, but much work remains.