The Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has said that the start of “strategic dialogue” with farmers announced during the state of the union address, must recognise the “cheap food era”.
The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the commencement of dialogue during her final annual speech.
During her address, von der Leyen expressed her gratitude to farmers for producing healthy food every day.
Von der Leyen said that this is “not an easy task” in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate change and “new obligations” on farmers.
She said these factors are “having a growing impact” on farmers’ work and farmers’ incomes.
ICMSA president, Pat McCormack said that “until and unless” the price inflation of retail corporations is acted upon, “there could be no hope” of reaching EU farming and food production sustainability goals.
“It’s very obvious that the commission prioritised the need for a unified approach and ‘one size fits all’ over the actual data and individual responses.
“The delusion, the fantasy, that farmers are now going to have to carry the environmental cost of producing food in addition to the economic cost that they have been bearing for 35-odd years has to be just dismissed out of hand,” McCormack said.
ICMSA
McCormack added that the address was “a more rounded approach” than Ireland ever received from its politicians, but that strategic dialogue wouldn’t work until the “cheap food era” came to an end.
McCormack said that Irish farmers had “rarely if ever” gained the impression that their opinions and views were considered, mentioning the recent nitrates decision as an example.
The association has stated that it believes it would be “wiser” for the EU Commission to discuss in separate dialogues on various topics, “on what are going to be distinct situations with distinct solutions”.