Charlie McConalogue had some goodies for young farmers when he came to Naas for the Macra conference at the weekend.

The extension of TAMS to a second milking robot was a response to strong lobbying from Macra and the senior farm organisations, and his pledge to explore ways to grant access to new entrants into ACRES was popular. McConalogue and IFA president Francie Gorman were interested observers at a farm walk on Thomas O’Connor’s farm in Moone.

A recent high-profile IFA county chair, I understand he is young enough to run for Macra president when Elaine Houlihan’s term ends next spring. Just saying.

Normally, the agriculture minister gets top billing at the gathering of rural youth, but with the country on the cusp of an election, Taoiseach Simon Harris, was also in attendance.

From neighbouring Wicklow, Harris repeated his recent assertion in the Dáil that farmers are subject to unfair criticism in relation to their efforts to protect the environment. Martin Heydon’s presence was inevitable, with his native county of Kildare hosting.

Mental health initiative

Heydon made an unfortunate analogy when complimenting Macra on its mental health ‘Make the Moove’ initiative. “They took the bull by the horns,” the minister with responsibility for farm safety said. Grasping the nettle might be a non-lethal alternative.

Heydon made some interesting remarks on planning for people from rural areas in counties like Kildare, contrasting the south of the county with urban areas like Naas and Maynooth in the northern part of the county.

On Sunday night, as Macra members gathered for their conference banquet, Francie Gorman was to be found in Adare at the Paddy Fitzgerald Awards, along with much of the IFA’s leadership.

This award recognises a lifetime of service by an IFA member, and recipient Breeda Horgan was a further reminder of long-established links between the IFA and Macra.

Breeda started in Macra in the 1960s before becoming a key member of the IFA team in north Cork and indeed nationally, who worked with farm families to save family farms during the credit crunch of the early 1980s.

The chair of the award committee is Martin Stapleton, who last year contested the presidency of the IFA with Francie Gorman. The mutual respect between the two men only grew during that gruelling and close campaign.

Meanwhile, next Tuesday, the US will vote to see who will lead its nation and, by extension, the free world for the next four years. It would be wonderful to see even a modicum of respect break out in that campaign, but I won’t be holding my breath.