The Irish Farmers' Association yesterday demanded "fair play" in the economy, the National Development Plan and the forthcoming Budget.
Speaking at the national ploughing championships in Cork, the president, Mr Tom Parlon, said that as there was no indexation built into the last CAP Reform proposals, farm incomes will continue to be eroded.
"Other sectors going into a new national agreement will not only be demanding full compensation for future inflation but a significant increase in their real incomes," he said.
"The Government has a responsibility to ensure a degree of fair play in the economy and IFA will judge its commitment by the level of Exchequer co-financing for agricultural investment and structural reform in the National Development Plan," he said.
That would involve committing £248 million yearly from the National Exchequer to co-finance the rural environment protection, early retirement and forestry schemes. It would need to provide £65 million a year for the control of farmyard pollution scheme, the dairy hygiene scheme and the young farmer installation scheme under structural funding. He said that substantial investment would also be needed in the food industry in order to redirect Irish exports towards the consumer markets of Europe. Much of this money from the Exchequer would be recouped in taxes, he said, adding that he had sought an immediate meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, to hear his views on the issue.
The president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association, Mr Frank Allen, said a few key decisions by the Department would create a new attitude towards entering farming.
The first of these was to ensure that young farmers had incomes equal to those that they could get in other jobs and this would involve giving tax breaks to farmers.
Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, published a consumer survey of 14 European countries which showed that Irish people are most satisfied with their beef.
The Danes, the Swedes and the Irish were the most likely to be beef eaters and the number of households eating meat had increased by one per cent since 1997, the survey said.
An average of 91 per cent of the households eat meat but this rose to 97 per cent in Ireland and over 80 per cent of the Irish said they would be eating the same or more meat in the future.
Ireland also had the highest proportion of households eating lamb, 81 per cent, followed by the UK at 77 per cent. Beef was eaten in over 86 per cent of European households, the survey found.
Looking at Bord Bia's continental target markets for beef, beef was eaten by 94 per cent of Dutch households, 93 per cent of French and 87 per cent of Italian.
The survey, carried out in Ireland, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK, found the percentage of people mentioning BSE had fallen dramatically from 60 per cent in '97 to just 21 per cent.
The United Farmers' Association, representing small farmers, yesterday criticised the IFA over its stand on the allocation of the 32 million gallons of milk.
Its PRO, Mr Michael O'Callaghan, claimed the IFA had not even sought increased allocation in the Agenda 2000 negotiations but UFA had and now wanted this distributed to producers with under 35,000 gallons.
He said the IFA demand to get rid of the system of leasing milk quota was an attack on the most vulnerable people in farming, the widows, the elderly, the sick and others who gained income from leasing the quota they were unable to use themselves.