The Irish Farmers Journal saw fit early in the IFA election to urge voters to use their votes carefully when choosing a new president.
Its editor, Mr Matthew Dempsey, said the day of the old-style street protest was over and a new way of approaching problems would have to be found. The most militant of the four candidates, Mr John Dillon, who claimed credit for forcing the blockade against beef factories in January 2000, was extremely angry.
Mr Dillon, the fiery deputy president of the organisation for the past four years, had also led a sit-in at the offices of the European Commission, which caused nearly as much embarrassment to the Government as the No-to-Nice vote. However, it was highly successful and the issue, a potential loss of payments when the EU switched from paying farmers on the number of animals they owned to the number of acres, was eventually resolved by the Taoiseach.
Mr Dillon and his supporters had been seeking £10 million extra in payments. They would have settled for £5 million, but instead they won a total of £50 million from a Government whose coffers were overflowing.
Although the Commission was reported to be furious and the Government embarrassed, the IFA membership reckoned it was the most cost-effective sit-in ever arranged.
Judging by Mr Dillon's victory the message was not lost on the membership which elected him as their leader last night.
They also seem to have remembered that it was Mr Dillon who headed the troops in Ulster, where he led a group of poultry producers in a protracted dispute with Monaghan Poultry Products, which won higher prices for producers but eventually the company closed down.
The pounding of feet on pavements and the occupation of lobbies certainly delivered in the millennium year, but given the changed circumstances of the economy will it be tactically profitable in the future?
The refusal of IFA members to allow National Roads Authority personnel to survey land being acquired for the road building programme also proved successful. The association forced the Irish taxpayer to pay an average of £24,000 an acre for land.
However, IFA may have won that war but it lost ground in the bank of public goodwill it had won during the protracted blockade of the meat factories in January 2000.
It also further dented the support which had flowed unflinchingly from the public during the foot-and-mouth crisis. The IFA will have to set about winning back some public support again.
Mr Dillon will have to focus on a public and a Government with fewer resources than during the Celtic Tiger days, which will be more reluctant to share with a sector which is seen increasingly to be greedy, privileged and less relevant than in the past.
The IFA president will have to lead his members through a new round of World Trade talks .
But the greatest threat will be from inside the EU, where a mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy will most certainly mean less support for farmers than it has in the past. The future will require a great deal of sophisticated leadership from the IFA, which has a declining membership, mirroring the drift from the land.
