Never have I seen the trend in crop prices diverge so much and it’s not to Irish farmers’ advantage. I am using the world benchmark of the Chicago Board of Trade for prices.

First, the actual numbers. The farm crop that has risen the most over the last year is sugar. It’s 44% ahead of the price it was this time last year.

Next is soya – down just less than 10% compared with this time last year – but way behind is wheat, which is down over 35% less on this time last year, and is at its lowest point in the last three years. While maize is down by a very significant 29%.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the EU made a mistake in removing all barriers to Ukranian wheat entering the EU, and it’s no wonder that neighbouring countries, led by Poland, are objecting to imports collapsing their market.

As we have mentioned before, while Ukraine is an important wheat producer, it’s output is far smaller than Russia’s, which has become the world’s largest wheat exporter, while Brazil powers ahead in the growth of its maize and soya outputs, as well as its sugar and beef.

No wonder they are anxious for the Mercusor deal to go ahead as quickly as possible.

Europe has a large balance of payments surplus on its high quality food and drinks products, but this seems to me to be the result of a distortion where European means ‘manufactured in Europe’, but not necessarily ‘manufactured with European ingredients’.

Simon Coveney is right – everyone talks about European beef being undermined by Brazilian product produced to different standards, but nobody mentions the obvious parallel in the case of grain and animal feedstuffs.

We have formed a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in which food security was an overarching principle. Costs of production are, in general, higher in Europe than the most favoured producers in individual commodities in other parts of the world. Recent developments, especially in Brazil and Russia, should mean that Europe should re-assess what the CAP should mean in today’s new world.

The example of sugar should serve as a lesson. The European sugar industry is a shadow of its former self; the Irish industry is, of course, extinct.

The current high-world price reflects a new market reality from which Irish farmers are excluded. We should be careful the same does not happen in other sectors.