Michael D Higgins highlights ‘critical importance’ of family farms

President Michael D Higgins has spoken about the "critical importance" of family farms to the whole country and challenged the assumption that modernisation means urbanisation.

He was speaking at the International Family Farming Conference organised by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) and Teagasc in Dublin to mark the United Nations's International Year of Family Farming. Mr Higgins said maintaining vibrant agriculture and preserving the family farm model was "of critical importance" to the future of this country.

The family farm was vital in ensuring no portion of the national territory was left neglected, economically, socially or environmentally. “It is a vital necessity if we want an Ireland of thriving local communities, not just people who are attached to an economy only. And it is a vital necessity if we want to continue to eat good food, and sustain a loving and rich relationship with our natural environment,” he said.

Urbanisation

Mr Higgins said it was time to forcefully challenge “the idea that modernisation and socio-economic progress require urbanisation. I believe, conversely, that sustainable rural development offers a viable alternative to massive rural flight”, he said. Mr Higgins said this rural flight too often fed the mushrooming of shanty towns on the edges of cities all over the world.

Gorta-Self Help Africa chief executive Ray Jordan said it broke his heart to see families leaving the countryside for urban areas to give their children a better chance. "You have to make sure that agriculture and the skill involved in agriculture takes pride of place in the knowledge system in Africa, " he said.

Bread basket

Mr Jordan said that the stereotypical view of Africa as a basket case was “completely wrong” and in fact it was the only continent with sufficient land and water to be the bread basket of Europe.

“If we put the farm family at the centre of development for the next 20 years, I have no doubt at all that this vision of never having a famine in the world again can absolutely be achieved,” he said.

IFA president Eddie Downey noted there were 500 million farm families in the world which made the family farm "the largest employer in the world". However, many farm families were no longer getting a fair reward for the vital job they did.

Mr Downey said a combination of factors was sapping income and profitability out of family farming.

People were affected by extreme price volatility, escalating input costs, reduced European Union support, inequity in a food supply chain and costly political and societal bureaucratic interference. He said it was time the EU addressed the dominance of the major supermarket chains with regulation.