The penny is beginning to drop. Farmers, especially those with families or debts or both, cannot cope with the wrenching volatility in prices and income we have seen over the last few years. The latest official buzzword to deal with the problem is “risk mitigation strategy”, in other words, some policy that will reduce the risk of an income collapse.

The effects of the present inertia in policy are best summed up by the reality of land ownership where fewer than 7% of Irish farmers are under 35 and according to the Central Statistics Office, just 4.3% of farm owners are under that age.

If young people are not willing to accept the risk by opting for farming, even on what would normally be considered highly viable farms, then it’s time to re-examine the constraints.

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Leaving aside the European Commission proposal that farmers receiving a pension should not be eligible for EU direct payments, it is clear that some form of price or profit guarantees are going to have to be part of the next CAP.

It’s not as if there aren’t precedents.

The outstanding example is the United States of America where 80%-90% of crops produced are covered by some form of margin or weather insurance and almost half of milk output would have some form of cover.

The crunch question of course is who pays the premium that guarantees the income in the event of a shortfall?

In reality the cost is split between government and farmer with, as a rule of thumb, the government paying about 65% of the cost, the farmer paying the other 35% and the insurance companies actually providing the cover and assessing the risk as they do in their other types of business.

This is all a new area for Irish and indeed European agriculture policy.

The original CAP had a full system of real, guaranteed prices for dairy, beef and tillage products underpinned by real money that operated an active intervention system that bought in products when prices were below the guaranteed level.

Its replacement by the direct payments has not delivered on the original promises made as they were continuously reduced and diverted away from meeting production objectives towards solving social goals.

We are now at another crossroads but the need for action is clear by the visibility of young potential farmers voting to walk away from both the sector and European food production.