Farmer's protest march in Dublin

Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous said:
The consumer will pay heavily for this privilege, unless they want to eat untraceable meat, poultry & dairy products from the Third World. The likes of Tesco will, as normal, pocket the additional margins and the consumer will save nothing.
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Yes, the consumers that actually want to pay higher prices for good quality local produce. The ones that don't won't have to subsidise the farmers any more.

I also agree with others who say that this is not an either/or situation.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

Apologies, ubiquitous I was not meaning to suggest that you and bb12 were the same person. I was using the word "You" in a global term.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

shanegl said:
Yes, the consumers that actually want to pay higher prices for good quality local produce. The ones that don't won't have to subsidise the farmers any more.
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They won't be subsidising the farmers, they will just be subsidising the likes of Tesco & Wal-Mart.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

Jimmy's Farm sounds more like a large-scale estate/industrial enterprise than anything else. It certainly does not sound like an operation that could be sustained on a typical owner-managed family farm. For a start, there is no way that a normal family farm would be permitted under this country's health regulations to produce AND process, chicken AND beef AND pork, unless each unit was run for all intents and purposes as separate enterprises. The risk of disease and cross-contamination of produce would horrify the Dept of Agriculture.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

bb12 said:
the reality is that only for the subsidies, there would be a real reduction of farmers in ireland..
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Grants and subsidies are a factor in most industries.

Look at the money Intel got from the state.

Farmers are an easy target. People moan about the price of milk but see no problem with the price of a pint of guinness.

The supermarkets often get a bigger margin than the farmers.

This is a disgrace.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous said:
Jimmy's Farm sounds more like a large-scale estate/industrial enterprise than anything else. It certainly does not sound like an operation that could be sustained on a typical owner-managed family farm. For a start, there is no way that a normal family farm would be permitted under this country's health regulations to produce AND process, chicken AND beef AND pork, unless each unit was run for all intents and purposes as separate enterprises. The risk of disease and cross-contamination of produce would horrify the Dept of Agriculture.
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I watched the TV programme and it wasn't like that ...in any case surely the same rules in the UK as apply here?
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

YOBR said:
Perhaps not those specific items, but what is to stop farmers finding out what consumers want and sell it to them, I think its called marketing:rolleyes:
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In Ireland, one of the strengths of our food industry is that producers produce and marketers market. The fusion of marketing and production has been a disaster in the UK and other markets. You only have to look at the bird flu scandal that engulfed the Bernard Matthews turkey conglomerate for a recent example.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

YOBR said:
...in any case surely the same rules in the UK as apply here?
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Not necessarily. The regulations governing animal tagging & movement are much more lax in Northern Ireland than in the Republic for example. As I say, the likes of Jimmy's Farm could not exist here, unless as a factory-type operation with totally separate production units and processes.
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous;614119 As I say said:
Jimmy's farm is not a factory type operation...Its just another example of farmers here wanting to keep the status quo...how many years has it been since New Zealand scrapped all their food subsidies...
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Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous said:
In Ireland, one of the strengths of our food industry is that producers produce and marketers market. The fusion of marketing and production has been a disaster in the UK and other markets. You only have to look at the bird flu scandal that engulfed the Bernard Matthews turkey conglomerate for a recent example.
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So a local farmer cannot find out what the local market wants, grow it, and then sell it at a local market.....really???????
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

YOBR said:
So a local farmer cannot find out what the local market wants, grow it, and then sell it at a local market.....really???????
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Well, for a start, outside Counties Dublin, Meath and parts of Wexford and Kilkenny and isolated spots in a few other counties, practically all of Irish farmland is not of sufficient quality to support the commercial growing of vegetables or cereals, that is without application of obscene levels of fertilisers. And as I said earlier, consumers are not really interested in buying whole beasts or unpasteurised milk. And any farmer wanting to open their own abattoir and/or butchery will get short shrift from the Dept of Ag....
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous said:
Well, for a start, outside Counties Dublin, Meath and parts of Wexford and Kilkenny and isolated spots in a few other counties, practically all of Irish farmland is not of sufficient quality to support the commercial growing of vegetables or cereals, that is without application of obscene levels of fertilisers. And as I said earlier, consumers are not really interested in buying whole beasts or unpasteurised milk. And any farmer wanting to open their own abattoir and/or butchery will get short shrift from the Dept of Ag....
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It would appear that you have a problem for every solution, how typical of Irish farmers...keep the status quo and let the taxpayer, be they Irish or European, keep sending out the cheque...
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

Again I'm not a farmer. You ignore the possibility that the status quo exists as it is the best (or least worst) alternative possible, and choose instead to typecast farmers as unimaginative thickos. What makes me suspect that you don't really know a whole lot about agriculture and food production?
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

I have never intimated that you are a farmer or that Irish farmers are unitelligent. Indeed, irish farmers are have proved to be a very effect lobby group when it comes to dealing with Government. what am I challenging is the fact of the need for change in Irish agriculture ...you can survive withouit subsidies...why not look at http://www.newfarm.org/features/0303/newzealand_subsidies.shtml and the attached quote

"New Zealand agriculture is profitable without subsidies, and that means more people staying in the business: Alone among developed countries of the world, New Zealand has virtually the same percentage of its population employed in agriculture today as it did 30 years ago, and the same number of people living in rural areas as it did in 1920.”
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

I don't have an issue with Irish farming following the NZ model, if this is practical. In fact I would welcome it. However as a non-farmer I suspect that the reasons why this has not been done are a good bit more complex than you imagine. For a start you don't seem to appreciate that the size and profile of the average farm in NZ (a large scale factory farm) is on a totally different scale to that in Ireland (a small owner-managed operation). You are comparing apples with oranges.

[broken link removed]
Farm size and numbers

The average size of sheep farms increased by 19 percent from 467 hectares in 1994 to 554 hectares in 2002. Over the same period, the strong growth in the national dairy herd resulted in the average dairy farm increasing from 102 to 146 hectares. There were 13,000 farms engaged in sheep farming and 14,000 engaged in farming dairy cattle in 2002. Respectively, these farms occupied 7.2 million and 2.1 million hectares of land.
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[broken link removed]
# There are around 130,000 farmers in Ireland.
...
# Average farm size is 32 hectares with almost 50% of farms less than 20 hectares.
# According to the Teagasc National Farm Survey, on 35% of farms the farmer combines farming with an off-farm job. On 48% of farms, the farmer and/or the spouse have an off-farm job. Farmers with off-farm employment are predominantly involved in cattle or sheep farming.
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Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

ubiquitous said:
I don't have an issue with Irish farming following the NZ model, if this is practical. In fact I would welcome it. However as a non-farmer I suspect that the reasons why this has not been done are a good bit more complex than you imagine. For a start you don't seem to appreciate that the size and profile of the average farm in NZ (a large scale factory farm) is totally on a different scale to that in Ireland (a small owner-managed operation). You are comparing apples with oranges.
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This is precisely my point, Irish farming in its current state is unsustainable and that is why we need to move to different models, e.g. New Zealand...if this means that the smaller farmers will leave (which I suspect is the trend anyway) then so be it....
 
Re: What is the protest march in Dublin I've just seen?

Yes but then you are in a position where instead of a large number of small farms, you end up with a small number of factory outfits - the farming equivalents of Dunnes Stores & Larry Goodman.

I don't know how you can reconcile this with your ideal of farmers selling their own products in local markets.

The experience in the UK has been that the trends in this direction have been at the expense of food safety, animal welfare and public confidence in the product.
 
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