Following a meeting of farmers in Athlone at the weekend, the organisers are going to “push ahead” with trying to form a new farm group.
The meeting was organised through Ireland’s Farm Discussion Group Facebook page, and took place on Sunday (February 19) at the Athlone Springs Hotel in Co. Westmeath.
The meeting was partly organised by Liam McLaughlin, who set up the social media page.
Speaking to Agriland, McLaughlin said that the meeting was a highly emotive one, with “grown men standing with tears in their eyes” when talking about the problems and issues they see and experience in farming at the moment.
A wide range of topics were discussed at the meeting and, despite a lower-than-hoped-for attendance (about 60 to 70 people), McLaughlin described it as “one of the most impressive meetings I was ever at myself”, a feeling that he said others shared.
“We are going to push ahead now [with forming a group],” he said.
Another meeting is planned to progress that idea further, with McLaughlin saying: “We’re not going to beat around the bush too long.
“The next meeting is probably going to be a fairly direct one, and there will be action taken probably right away.
“I know everybody thinks there is enough organisations throughout the country, and a lot of people are saying ‘not another group’,” he commented.
“But this one is going to be different… This one is going to be of farmers, and by farmers. Nobody is going to be making money out of it. Nobody will be getting rich out of it,” he added.
McLaughlin used the example of the Beef Plan Movement-organised factory gates protest in 2019 as an example of what farmers can do when organised in this way.
“Beef Plan achieved more in three weeks than some big organisations achieved in 50 years. You’ve got to give them credit, and nobody can deny that. It’s a pity [Beef Plan] went the way it did.
“I was at the gates myself [in 2019], and to be quite honest, my heart was on fire. I said ‘here we go, we’re going to do this thing’, and my heart was broken when the whole thing fell apart,” he said.
The meeting on Sunday was addressed by Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath, part of the Rural Independents group of TDs.
McLaughlin said that the farmers at the meeting indicated their support for the Rural Independents.
“We’ll back the Rural Independents 100% because they are the only ones speaking sense at the moment, and the only ones representing rural people,” he said.
However, he said that the new farm group “doesn’t really want to get bogged down in politics”.
The focus of the new group, McLaughlin said, would be organising farmers into purchasing groups in order to put them in a better position in affording farm inputs, particularly fertiliser.
The group will even look into the possibility of importing fertiliser themselves.
“We’re going to build it from the bottom up. We hope to get across Ireland with a new co-operative that cannot be corrupted. That would be the greater picture,” McLaughlin said.