The withdrawal of active ingredients in the agri-chemical sector, the continuing lack of real progress in adopting the well-proven genetic editing technology and different standards for competing imports: these are the basic external factors underlying the by-now well-ventilated problems of the Irish horticultural sector.

The facts were spelt out clearly at both the recent Irish Farmers Journal Tillage Day and the Nuffield Ireland gathering.

As well as the well-publicised difficulties in horticulture, I had not realised that potato producers are also facing their own pressures with blight becoming much more difficult to control.

A few years ago, Teagasc demonstrated clearly that genetically modified potatoes could be produced that were totally resistant to blight. It is ironic that this one development would have dramatically reduced the number of sprays applied to a crop and the amount of chemicals.

It might have been expected that Brexit, with its ban on seed potatoes from Scotland, might have resuscitated the previously flourishing seed potato industry but there are no signs of that happening.

A few initiatives are possible and should be considered. The TAMS grant system has encouraged needed investment in buildings and equipment across the agri sector, in general.

These are sectors where producer groups would have a logical role in both price and conditions of supply negotiations with supermarket customers. A tentative effort in the horticultural sector was made many years ago with the formation of North Dublin Growers but the temptation to bargain on an individual basis was too great and the effort collapsed.

If a national producer group was given tax-free status both in regard to retained earnings and distributed dividends and with recommendations from the new food regulator as to how it might operate to even up the bargaining scales, we could see real progress. Co-ops used to have this tax-exempt status.

It’s clear that unless some new policy initiatives are taken, the sector’s decline will continue.