The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has launched its ‘Guide to Election 2020’, highlighting what it says are the key farming issues.
The most important among these issues, the association says, is the “relentless pressure” on farmer incomes and the “constant attacks from the most aggressive and arrogant elements of the environmental movement”.
The ICMSA said that it intends to send a copy of the guide to every candidate standing in rural constituencies in the coming days.
McCormack urged the Taoiseach to “note carefully the key issues identified”.
The guide is divided into the following sections: ‘Price, Income and Margin’; ‘Dairy’; ‘CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) Post-2020’; ‘Fixing Ireland’s Beef and Livestock Sector’; ‘Environment, Sustainable Farming and Renewables’; and ‘Farming and Finance’.
“The document has been designed specifically to alert candidates to the issues identified as most pressing for our farming and wider rural communities at this point, and also to solutions that are doable, practical, fair and progressive,” McCormack said.
2 dominant issues
However, McCormack stressed that there were two issues in particular that would “dominate this election as far as farmers were concerned”.
The first of these is price.
We have farmers across all sectors receiving the same prices as their parents received 30 years ago. Everyone sympathises, but we don’t want sympathy anymore. We want fair prices. We want action.
“Politicians who go to farmers’ yards and doors are going to be told that forcefully and straight out,” the ICMSA president stressed.
The second dominant issue the ICMSA is highlighting is the “constant attack on farmers’ livelihoods and the economic viability of rural Ireland”.
“Farmers accept the reality of climate change and accept the need for change, but we reject absolutely the idea that farmers alone will have to change their way of life. Every part of society will have to contribute to the increased costs of changing the way we produce food,” McCormack argued.
Any candidate that comes out with ill-informed, glib anti-farmer messages will be challenged on their grasp of the facts.
He added that he “would not tolerate a campaign where farmers are made the whipping boys for anyone’s pet projects or concerns”.