DEAR SIR:

The profile of Irish agriculture is on the point of radical change. After almost three decades of a stable suckler cow population, both Munster and Leinster’s shares of those cows are now on the point of collapse.

The efforts of those people involved in the Save our Sucklers campaign have been highly commendable.

Teagasc’s specialist personnel on the ground have also been excellent even if their readiness to promote their political master’s policy of maximum production as opposed to optimum production is regrettable. The combination of a brutal spring, a disastrous summer drought, the looming Brexit, but most of all a totally indifferent minister has brought suckler farmers to the point where a difficult decision has been made relatively easy. Farmers have eventually concluded that their innate affinity for breeding quality cattle is no longer sustainable. Love alone is no longer enough.

Minister Creed’s non-interventionist stance would qualify him for a seat at the British Liberal Cabinet of the 1840s, which oversaw The Great Famine. It truly is astonishing that Minister Creed’s determination to do absolutely nothing about anything appears to be working well for him. I’m reliably informed that Minister Creed’s seat in his Cork Northwest constituency is extremely safe. However, his Fine Gael colleagues elsewhere, but particularly in the sucker heartland of the west, may feel the peoples’ displeasure more acutely. It is also ironic that the biggest losers from a beef cow depopulation will not be the farmers, but the communities from which they come.

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