ICMSA dismiss von der Leyen’s ‘new’ strategy for agriculture until “fundamental binary decision” addressed – Commission guilty of “disabling political cowardice”

 The President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, has said that Ursula von der Leyen’s remarks in which she referenced ‘a new European strategy for our agriculture and food sector’ could not be taken seriously until such point as the Commission finally chooses to either fundamentally reform margins in the Food Supply Chain or increase direct supports to farmers without attaching expensive environmental conditions.

Mr. Drennan said that this was the fundamental binary decision that faced Ms von der Leyden and her Commission, in precisely the same way that it had faced the previous three Presidents of the Commission, without the decision ever being made.   The results of what Mr. Drennan described as “this disabling political cowardice” was the accelerated decline of the EU’s indigenous farming sector – specifically the family-based farming model – and with that, the growing fears around food security and the demonstrable inability of the EU to feed itself.

Mr. Drennan said that Ireland’s farming and food sector provided an almost perfect ‘laboratory experiment’ in how aimless and drifting EU policy implemented by an ideologically hijacked Member State Government could actually so undermine a vibrant farming sector in astonishingly short timeframes.  The ICMSA President cited Ireland’s world-famous dairy sector as his example.

“Under Ms von der Leyen’s Commission and under the present Irish Government, the value of the Irish Dairy Sector – the jewel in our agri crown – has collapsed by around 40% in just three or four years.   The average Irish dairy farmer milking 90-odd cows is now coming out with half the minimum hourly wage set by the State. That’s the legacy of her Commission’s last ‘European strategy for our agriculture and food’.   Until and unless the Commission decides – and directs – Member States to actively support their farming communities then she can go on mouthing these useless platitudes and nothing will change.  Her choice remains what it always has been: either legislate and regulate for fair margins from the retail corporations and face down their intimidation and threats of consumer inflation or increase direct supports to the farmers and decouple those payments from the environmental regulations that have effectively devalued the payments to the point of irrelevance.   Those are her choices now – and they have been the choices facing the Commission for a decade. If the EU wants sustainable food, then it’s going to have to pay a sustainable price”, said Mr. Drennan.

The ICMSA President said farmers had never denied the reality of environmental issues and climate change and the need to incorporate the science into a coherent response.   But he said that farmers had “absolutely and validly” questioned the apparent strategy of loading the costs of addressing the environment and climate change for food production onto the farmers exclusively.

The ICMSA President said that the rest of von der Leyen’s agenda was just “a string of tired aspirations” that owed more to imagination than reality.  He said that if Ms. von der Leyen and the EU was to move past cliché and into meaningful direction, then it was going to involve hard decisions about delivering sustainable incomes for farmers and sharing the cost-burden of climate change equitably.  Above all, it would require a realisation on her part that fretting about the EU’s Food Security while farmers across Europe just gave up and exited on a daily – if not hourly- basis could never be the basis for sound policy and strategic security.

Ends        18 July 2024

Denis Drennan, 086-8389401

President, ICMSA.

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office