BY MARCELLA FITZGERALD
LONDON - About 40,000 farmers and their families throughout
the Republic of Ireland marched in Dublin October 28 and
rallied outside parliament, the Dail, to demand a living
income.
The march was called by the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the Irish Creamery Suppliers Association, both of which are dominated by well-heeled farmers with big holdings. IFA president Tom Parlon said the action was held to protest "government and European Union inaction on the collapsing farm incomes, disastrous cattle, pig and sheep prices, including red tape and bureaucracy."
Prior to the march, organizers anticipated a turnout of 15,000. Nearly three times that number took part, showing the anger building among the farmers.
Prices for beef that farmers sell on the market have fallen sharply, along with a significant drop in beef consumption in European Union markets due to the "mad cow" disease crisis. Exports of beef and other meat products have also fallen sharply in trade with Russia and countries in Asia, due to the economic crisis that has engulfed those countries. Bad weather has also created a serious fodder problem for the poorest farmers along the west coast of Ireland, many of whom have little or no winter feed for their animals. Sheep farmers in the west are also being forced to remove 200,000 ewes from the mountainsides,according to a European Union directive claiming the land is being overgrazed. Prices paid to farmers for sheep have collapsed.
"The facts show that for most farmers this has been one of the worst years," said an article in the October 29 Irish Times. "Before long thousands of them are likely to go out of business."
The number of farmers has been declining rapidly. Workers in agriculture have fallen from 390,000 in 1960 to 134,000 last year. Class differentiation and the income gap among farmers is also widening. "Basically two-thirds of the farming community barely scrape by and independent research has shown just over 50,000 farms are commercially viable," said the Irish Times.
Among Irish farmers, 63 percent make less than 10,000 ($15,000) per year and 60 percent supplement their farm income with wages from other full or part-time jobs. Only 7 percent of farms have an annual income exceeding 30,000 ($45,000).
The demonstrators in Dublin pressed four demands. The first was the extension of Family Income Supplement act to cover low- income farmers, which the government opposes. Second was pressing the government to force the big beef processing companies to pay higher prices to the farmers for their cattle. Thirdly, they pressed for a special loan package from the banks for farmers hit by monsoon rainfall along the west coast in August and September.
"All we are harvesting in the south is black trash," said Jim O'Reagan, a farmer from Kinsale. "It's not a harvesting job, its a salvaging job."
The marchers also demanded that the Irish government veto changes in the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which are currently under discussion. These changes include cuts in the guaranteed prices paid to farmers for beef, milk and cereals over the next four years. The effect of these changes will be to squeeze the smaller farmers, pushing a further layer off the land. This is the long-term restructuring of agriculture the CAP aims to drive through. Since 1972 the operation of the Mansholt Plan has meant that farms categorized as "transitional," that is, under 20 acres, have disappeared in Ireland. About 80 percent of farm subsidies in Ireland have gone to the top 20 percent of farmers.
Big-business organizations and the trade union officialdom joined forces to condemn the Dublin march as "irresponsible and selfish." The Dublin City Centre Business Association called on the organizers to keep the demonstration away from the city center so it would not disrupt business.
Peter Cassells, General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trades Unions, released a press statement the day before the march condemning it as "irresponsible and selfish."
"These bully-boy tactics do nothing to help the case of the genuinely poor farmers," Cassells said. "The farming organisations should call off their invasion of Dublin. They must stop exploiting the plight of a minority of farmers and stop attacking the rights of a majority of taxpayers to travel in their own city."
The Irish Labour Party split over the issue. Labour Senator Patrick Gallagher backed the demonstration, while Bernadette Malone, Labour member of the European Parliament, said that farmers had "no right to disrupt my city." Her remarks were said to have boosted the march. "It's our city too and we have as much right to march as building workers or anyone else," responded one farmer from Tullamore.
Democratic Left member of parliament Proisinias De Rossa echoed Cassells, saying that farmers had bigger, newer houses and cars than their counterparts in town. He did not believe the farmers "year after year, forecasting doom after every wet day and disaster with every temporary fall in the price of cattle." Defending the stance of the Fianna Fail-led coalition government, he opposed the extension of welfare payments to farming families. "It would cost up to 70 million pounds at the expense of careers, pensioners, and the health services." he argued.
Fine Gael, one of the main capitalist parties, however, came out in support of the demand for welfare payments to farm families. They called for the extension of the Family Income Support payments to be available not only to small farmers, but to all those who were self-employed.