Farmers fight to make ends meet in Ireland

By Ögmundur Jónsson
May 15, 2023

“We lost money for nearly two years solid,” Roy Gallie, chairperson of the Irish Farmers’ Association Pigs Committee, told the Militant by phone April 16. Last year he helped organize protests at retailers to highlight the fact that prices paid to pig farmers were below their production costs.

“It’s reversed now,” Gallie said. “We went from losing a fortune to breaking even.” He said their campaign wasn’t aimed at workers paying more.

“Eventually, we got Irish government support, but we had to cut our number of sows by 10% to get the money.” Gallie worries what that means down the road. “Feeding the 8 billion people on this planet is a big responsibility. We’re not all about to go vegan. There will be a place for pig farming for a long time.”