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Margaret Donnelly: Policy-makers and farm leaders face complex decisions in deciding who are the ‘real’ as opposed to ‘armchair’ farmers

Farming Independent editor Margaret Donnelly Expand

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Farming Independent editor Margaret Donnelly

Farming Independent editor Margaret Donnelly

Farming Independent editor Margaret Donnelly

Margaret Donnelly Twitter Email

How and to what extent the EU and the State should support farmers will be a defining theme for agriculture over the next decade.

Until relatively recently, farmers had but one job in the eyes of our lawmakers: the production of food.

Emerging from the ashes of World War Two, European nations viewed a robust food production system as essential and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was born.

While by no means perfect, at a basic level the policy achieved its goals. Europeans, for the most part, are well fed.

Of late, though, a full belly no longer satisfies the demands of the CAP.

Since the late 1990s, farmers have additional responsibilities: first it was protecting the Environment; now it’s addressing Climate Change.

With little change in the size of the CAP budget in real terms over the years, farmers have reaped few financial rewards for these added tasks.

More and more of the funding previously directed at agricultural production is now being shifted to environmental priorities.

Leaving the merits of this shift to one side, it’s clear its impact is starting to cause uncertainty at farm level.

One example of this is the current debate around 'armchair farmers' and 'genuine farmers'.

Driven by the need to get declining CAP funding into the right hands, Irish policy-makers may face the controversial challenge of defining what a 'genuine farmer' actually is.

However, the knock-on effects of this definition could have significant consequences on farmland leasing entitlements, both for owners and renters.

It is clear that the new CAP will place higher demands on farmers in terms of environmental action required to draw down payments.

But the big question is why a farmer leasing entitlements would go to this extra effort if he has to give the payment for such action back to the landowner?

Farm organisations will grapple with defining who, or what, they believe is a genuine farmer. They are likely to find it impossible to keep all their members happy.

But for farmers at ground level, these decisions and definitions about ‘real’, ‘genuine’ and ‘armchair’ farmers will determine what happens to entitlements in the coming years.

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