Prior to the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) staging a sit-in at Bord Bia’s headquarters in Dublin, it could have been said that Irish cattle prices were at record high levels.

Today, however, we have a scenario unfolding which sees beef finishers ‘selling the shirts off their back’ just to keep their business afloat.

So, I do wonder to myself, is this a case of cause and effect?

Six months ago, Irish economists were telling us that the world is short of beef.

And given that the average time required from a calf’s conception until that same animal goes up a kill line is around three years, one is left to conclude that the red meat supply/demand narrative has not changed that much since last Christmas.

But what has changed in my opinion, is the image or esteem in which the Irish beef sector is held around the world.

And this comes back to the spectacle entered into by the IFA earlier this year.

Bord Bia debacle

Could one conclude that calling out the Bord Bia chair over what might be described as 'aesthetics' was hardly the best thought that any policy strategist within IFA ever came up with?

But, as the old saying goes, life is full of surprises.

I was once told by a man for whom I had lots of respect (a farmer) that high levels of intelligence and common sense could, sometimes, be strange bed fellows.

Maybe the IFA hierarchy thinks that the farce played out in Dublin over the Bord Bia debacle never reached the attention of the media in the UK, Europe and other countries around the world.

Of course it did. And the spectacle continued, an inquiry into the suitability of the current Bord Bia chair determined that there was majority support for him in the role and he does not need to be removed.

All of the controversy will come at a considerable expense to the public purse.

Was it based on a weak argument ‘camp-in’ at Bord Bia headquarters in the first place?

No doubt, it also provided further discomfort for agriculture minister, Martin Heydon.

Essentially, he found himself acquiescing to demands from the farm lobby group against what some might claim was his better judgement.

We can garner that Heydon was pretty ‘unimpressed’ with the whole debacle as he supported the entire board membership of Ireland’s food promotion body from the very instant the IFA blurted out the immortal words, ‘Brazilian beef’.

And frequent horn blasting by, allegedly, disgruntled farmers as they drove by the Heydon household in their tractors hardly helped to lift the minister’s mood.

We need a strong farm lobby

The future has to be played for.

And this issue is coming at the IFA like a train in the shape of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform.

What’s on the table now from Brussels is fundamentally flawed.

We are looking at policies that basically sideline production agriculture. But more than this, the funding package that is to accompany all of this is shockingly weak.

The great hope within all of this is the fact that Ireland hosts the presidency of the European Union when the key decisions around the reform of CAP are made.

So this puts Martin Heydon in the box seat when all this movement of tectonic plates is taking place.

Yes, it’s Ireland’s opportunity to shine on the grand stage of European and global agri-politics.

Many argue that the IFA will have the wind in its sails over the next six months.

Here comes the once-a-in-a-generation opportunity to put Irish farming on the front foot, which leads this writer to one question... can Bluebell afford to get it wrong?