We are 10 days into the 2024 general election campaign with not a word of note said, as yet, about the needs of the agricultural sectors by our politicians.
At one level, it reflects what the political parties really think about farming and food, but in a more fundamental sense, it also highlights the failure of our farming organisations to drive forward an informed public debate on the future needs of agriculture at this critically important time.
The politicians elected on November 29 will be in place for the next five years, and if they think that they don’t have to really worry about the farming vote, then, in all probability, they will be all the happier.
One would have thought that the fundamental importance of the nitrates derogation and the need to retain it into the future could have been used to profile the importance of production agriculture as a key discussion point for our politicians in the run-up to the election.
But, so far, this has proven not to be the case.
General election
Take crop production as another case in point. Much work was done by the Food Vision Tillage Group over the past two years to help chart a course for this critically important sector within Irish farming.
The members of the group were specifically commissioned by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, to carry out a much needed review of the tillage industry, and they duly reported back to the minister six months ago.
But, up to this point, there has been no official response from government to the tillage vision report.
Now, tillage farmers are left wondering if the work that was carried out so diligently on their behalf will count for nothing.
The question is this – will a new government simply decide to consign the Food Vision Tillage Group report to the history books?
It could then conveniently forget about the needs of a sector that has the potential to do so much for production agriculture across the board. Let’s hope this is not the case.