Congratulations must go to the board and management of Glanbia on the decisive outcome of last Friday’s special general meeting vote. Jack Kennedy goes into detail in this week's edition.

Farmers overwhelmingly accepted the deal, with over 80% voting in favour of each of the proposals. The outcome demonstrates what can be achieved where there is a strong and trusting relationship between two parties (Glanbia Co-op and Glanbia plc) along with the proper governance structures to properly execute a major transaction. It is in stark contrast what we are seeing playing out in Kerry.

The outcome is one that has delivered for Glanbia plc along with the co-op board and management. The next step is to ensure it delivers for farmers. In voting for the deal, farmers have accepted what they were given. Now it is down to the co-op board and management to ensure these farmers get what they want: a highly efficient co-op that can deliver leading prices for milk and grain – before the inclusion of trading bonuses – while providing key inputs at competitive prices.

This week's cartoon:

\ Jim Cogan

CAP strategic plan approved by Cabinet and off to Brussels

Ireland’s CAP strategic plan was presented and approved by Cabinet this week. It will now go to Brussels for approval. Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue defends his plan on the basis that most farmers will see an increase in their payments. But throughout the consultative process he has refused to make public the economic modelling on which this statement is based.

This is not to dispute the accuracy of the minister’s statement, but to point out the fact that he has refused to clearly outline the economic consequences for the sectors and individual farmers that will be asked to fund the higher payments for others. After all, there has been no significant increase in the total level of funding within the CAP budget.

Check out our readers' pics of the year:

Happy Christmas to our readers and advertisers

We wish all our readers and commercial clients a happy and safe Christmas.

It has been another challenging year as we continue to try to live our lives and run businesses within the stop-start environment that the pandemic has created.

In the Irish Farmers Journal we feel incredibly fortunate the despite the COVID-19 challenges we have been in a position to continue to produce our weekly print publication, enhance our digital offering, grow our multimedia platforms and further develop our MartBids bidding tool.

We would not have been in a position to do so without your ongoing support. In this light, we see record readership figures for the Irish Farmers Journal as a huge endorsement of the effort that the team invest on a daily basis to ensure we produce high-quality news and analysis that is relevant and valued by over 320,000 weekly readers.

On behalf of all the team, I wish you and your family a happy and safe Christmas.