It would be fair to say that it has been an exciting week for everyone involved with agriculture and food in Northern Ireland.
Whoever came up with the saying that a week is a long time in politics hit that nail perfectly on the head. The developments that have taken place within Northern Ireland’s farming sectors over the past seven days make the point perfectly.
Tuesday saw the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) hosting a climate change rally at Stormont. The event was attended by 750 farmers. And by common consent, the union played a bit of an ace card.
The media turned out ‘en masse’ to hear the union’s office bearer team deliver a series of speeches that got to the very core of the issue at hand.
In my opinion, all of the presentations made were clear, precise, extremely well delivered and reflected perfectly the concerns of local farmers on an issue that will impact fundamentally on their businesses over the coming years.
The final vote in the Stormont Assembly may not have gone the UFU’s way, but that was never going to be the case. The real victory for the UFU was the fact that it managed to put farming’s perspective on climate change into the public domain in a meaningful way.
Northern Ireland Protocol
So much for Tuesday. The next day, agriculture minister, Edwin Poots announced that he had instructed the permanent secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), to remove staff form duties that involve the inspection of goods, linked to the application of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
I am fully aware of the fact that Edwin Poots is a politician of long standing. But for him to ask civil servants to carry out instructions, the legality of which has yet to be determined, was wrong.
Putting people’s careers at risk on the back of a purely political objective must never be endorsed in the court of public opinion.
Thursday was marked by the resignation of Northern Ireland’s first minister, Paul Givan. And he brought with him the deputy first minister, Michelle of Neill.
A Stormont election is already on the cards for the middle of May. However, there is now growing pressure to have the election date brought forward.
Agriculture and food
Last time I checked, farming and food combined constituted the largest private sector within Northern Ireland’s economy.
So it would make sense, surely, to have the needs of both industries put centre stage in the upcoming election debates.
The UFU and other agri stakeholder groups have long been calling for farming and food to be made a mainstream issue of public interest here, in the rest of the UK and further afield.
And, for the most part, their attempts to make this happen have been falling on deaf ears within the ranks of the ‘political elite’.
However, I sense that the upcoming Stormont Assembly election campaign will provide the union and other like-minded bodies with a wonderful opportunity to change the mood music, where these matters are concerned.
Climate change and the Northern Ireland Protocol are the two most obvious issues that come to mind. Dealing with intra-UK trade issues should be a bit of a home run for the UFU.
As we already know, the protocol will be the big ticket issue up for discussion throughout the election campaign. UFU president, Victor Chesnutt has already said that it must be changed to reflect the needs of farmers in a more equitable way.
So surely now is the time for the union to list all the Northern Ireland Protocol related matters that are causing concern for members and have them fully debated over the coming weeks.
And, of course, there would also be an onus on the organisation to list all of the opportunities, which it believes the protocol is delivering for its members.