If it’s a question of budgetary resources from Europe then tanks are clear winners over tractors; agriculture has being given a back seat or – more to the point – has being handed slowly back to the members states.

Last week I attended the enormous “Forum for the Future of Agriculture”, held annually in the centre of Brussels since it was founded by the then-European Commissioner for Agriculture, Austrian Franz Fischler in 2008.

That was a different era.

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The discussions in the background were very clear

This time there was no Commissioner to give an outline of future prospects but there were several EU Commission officials who were competent in their fields but didn’t stray into the broader fundamental policy issues.

But the discussions in the background were very clear. I sat beside one German farmer who described how the EU sugar industry was in perpetual crisis with factories continuing to close and increased imports of cane sugar from Brazil under the Mercosur agreement threatening more difficulties.

Brussels-based observers pointed out the new concept of “regional and national partnerships” as being shorthand for extra flexibility for member states to help their own farmers if they can afford to.

Last week’s news carried in the Irish Farmers Journal on the possibility of the Irish Government giving help to farmers to cope with high fertiliser costs was a vivid example of the new horizons that are opening up.

The new imperative of defence spending is directly leading to reduced spending on the CAP – the proposed budget is down by 20%.

In one of the sessions, Barry Cowen MEP repeated several times that the agricultural budget wasn’t enough but in itself that wasn’t much help.

How much filters down to farmers is a different question

Others made the point that the EU still has a large trade surplus in agri food products – about €50 billion, so they ask, what’s the problem? But while true, this surplus is largely made up of spirits, wine and speciality foods. How much filters down to farmers is a different question.

The other repeated comment which surprised me was that the Common Agricultural Policy wasn’t all that common anyway and it was becoming too difficult to impose uniformity on member states stretching from Finland to Romania, with widely different income levels and social conditions.

We really are on the cusp of enormous policy change which will pose real challenges for national governments, including Ireland’s, which have become used to placing responsibility and blame for every difficult decision on Brussels while understandably taking the credit in Dublin for any favourable move.