As farmers we are getting wildly conflicting signals.

In Brussels, the new Agricultural Commissioner Christopher Hanson is hardly settled into his new role when he says quite openly that “we all know that the agricultural budget will not be any bigger because of the extra demands on it”.

By this he means very clearly the extra costs that extra defence are inevitably going to impose – at the same time, just a few months ago, the special report that the commission president Ursula von der Leyen commissioned from a German academic called very clearly for the normal CAP budget to be supplemented by special extra funding aimed at climate and environmental improvement measures undertaken by farmers.

Difficult to square the circle.

However, to get back to commissioner Henson, he clearly wants better bargaining power for farmers through producer groups etc as well as extra help for young farmers and a rejigging of direct payments towards smaller producers – but at the same time he urges us to diversify our income sources to spread the risks by, for example, setting up solar farms or getting set up for carbon trading – easier said than done.

Budget constraints

While it’s early days yet in the new commissioner term, it’s clear that he is going to be presented with budget constraints, a probable Mercosur agreement and pressing problems with generational renewal.

On a broader front, at an interesting series of presentations to mark 50 years of the Irish Farmers Monthly held at UCD’s Lyons Estate Farm, Tara McCarthy – formerly the head of Bord Bia and now head of sustainability at Altech – listed the main influences on farmers’ decision making as first and most important, policy, then regulation and then consumers. Thinking about it, it’s no great surprise that consumer preferences are so far down the line but of course while that is completely at variance with the normal commercial behaviour, farmers are subjected to so many competing pressures that policy and how it is enforced by Government has a huge day-to-day effect on farmers’ thinking and actions.

Nevertheless, Ann Randles of Ornua spoke of the resilience of Irish dairying following both Brexit and reduced demand from China while attempting to make sure that a Trump administration was fully aware that Kerrygold accounted for 95% of butter imports into the US and should not be included in any blanket tariffs aimed at the EU.