Last week, the Irish Farmers Journal published the definitive guide to the development of Irish farmland prices.

Just a few weeks ago, Savills, the international estate agency published its detailed account of how international farmland prices have developed since 2002, 24 years ago, long enough for clear trends to be established and just before Poland and most of the rest of eastern Europe joined the EU. The trend makes sober reading for western Europe’s farmers.

On his visit here last week, the new EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen was by any measure hugely impressive in his knowledge of and clear commitment to the sector.

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But his statement that it would only be fair to bring east European payments up to west European levels left me wondering if he had taken all the facts into account, especially the really massive increase in land prices, as well as the much lower wage levels and cost of living.

The stagnation of old EU member states’ land prices has not been matched in Ireland, partly because as Aidan Brennan pointed out in last week’s Land Price Report, Ireland has an extremely open land market with no restrictions on who can purchase land and in what amount.

Economic and population growth has meant a buoyant farmland demand in Ireland, but this does not hide the essential west European erosion of farmers’ asset base. The reasons seem straightforward.

Essentially, the Common Agricultural Policy was set up to establish food security in Europe by a variety of mechanisms particularly the system of guaranteed prices.

Once this was achieved, we were essentially reduced towards world market prices, with the intended compensatory payments subject to political manipulation and continuing budgetary erosion.

Once the essential investment was made, farmers continued to produce as long as the marginal cost of the output was covered.

No wonder there is a succession crisis across the western European farming sector with even France now having negative balance of payments in its food and agriculture account.

I must admit I have great sympathy with Commissioner Hansen’s proposal that farmers on a full pension should not be eligible for the BISS payment but it’s a harsh measure and I haven’t seen anything that would make such a fundamental change acceptable to governments and to farming organisations.