Attending a meeting of farmers this week demonstrated much of what is good about Irish agriculture but also a number of areas where there is room for improvement.

Prolonged weak prices, particularly for beef, have had a depressing effect on mood, as has the uncertainty caused by Brexit and to a lesser extent the forthcoming CAP reform.

Farming under attack

Conventional farming has also been under attack, especially since the start of the year, from the anti-meat and anti-animal products lobby who have achieved considerable media attention despite representing less than 10% of the population.

Add to this the climate change debate where the casual observer will be convinced that the issue of greenhouse gas emissions would be solved at a stroke if only the world was cleared of ruminant livestock.

Social media has delivered huge advances in communication and knowledge sharing but the downside is that it also delivers and spreads huge inaccuracies that can be credibly passed off as news without any proper redress or scrutiny.

Farmers have common interest

The external threats to our industry are numerous and visible. What is definitely not needed now is internal farmer strife and division with one sector looking to demonize the other. Successful farming is ultimately about using the land to produce a product that gives a return from the marketplace, whether it is beef, lamb, cereals or dairy products.

Ultimately, decisions at farm level will be made on where the best return is to be found and if the land is suitable for that type of farming.

Therefore, a farmer with a small or fragmented farm is unlikely to successfully pursue dairy farming which demands a substantial amount of land in a single block for milking.

Need to maximise land resource

That shouldn't make dairy the enemy of other sectors but there is an inevitable tension when it has a reasonably consistent level of profitability when livestock and tillage have struggled.

Dairy farmers are stronger in the conacre market, often squeezing out tillage and livestock farmers in the process. That is how it is in a free market economy and there is nothing to be gained for agriculture overall for the rest of the industry to demonize the dairy sector.

Dairy may be a more lucrative type of farming than beef at present but it needs a use for calves from dairy cows

The current position of strength of the Irish dairy sector also brings responsibility. It isn't sustainable for the dairy industry to put cows in-calf without consideration of the economic viability of the calf they produce.

The current position of strength of the Irish dairy sector also brings responsibility

The capacity of live exports of calves is limited and the research shows that there are dairy calf breeds where the male calf would need to carry a subsidy of €150/head to offset their failure to develop and perform as beef animals.

A mass cull of calves that aren't economically viable brings with it reputational damage and more negative publicity.

The only viable option is for dairy farmers to be mindful of the beef characteristics of their calves.

It could be win-win

To maintain dairy industry sustainability and peaceful coexistence with fellow farmers, use of bulls on the dairy herd with viable beef characteristics has the potential to benefit both categories. It gets dairy cows back in-calf and leaves a product that can be successfully reared by farmers whose business is beef production.

That has to be the basis for coexistence and farmers and their leaders can then better apply their minds to rebutting attacks on agriculture from the outside.