You might not have noticed it lately, but it seems we're all living in a police state, one which sets out systematically to criminalise farmers, writes Mary Raftery.
As the candidates declare themselves in the forthcoming election for IFA president, we can no doubt expect more entertainingly wild statements along these lines. It is all part of the way farmers love to paint themselves as persecuted, and as an election ploy it doubtless plays well to the gallery.
As police states go, mind you, ours is an extraordinarily generous one. According to Teagasc's latest farm survey, farmers last year received, on average, a massive 87 per cent of their income through State and EU direct subsidy.
And that's not all. Oh, no. Through a series of measures designed to protect farmers, our police state arranges that consumers (you and I) pay more to them for our food. Figures published by the Department of Agriculture indicate that across Europe, we all pay 26 per cent more for farm produce as a direct result of such protectionist mechanisms.
When you accumulate these financial supports for farmers, a paradoxical picture emerges of a sector probably over 100 per cent dependent on State and EU subsidy. In effect, farmers take as much, if not more, from the economy (by way of direct payments and artificially high prices for consumers) as they put into it. We, and the big bad police state, happily cover their losses. We call this the Common Agriculture Policy (Cap).
Even more depressingly, we delude ourselves by denying this reality and spouting platitudes about how important agriculture (and the Cap) is to our economy. The most recent example of this comes from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Farmers were delighted by his attack on British prime minister Tony Blair last week for daring to criticise the Cap. Blair is "dishonest", said Bertie; the Cap has recently been reformed and we should now leave it alone.
Not good enough, Tony Blair has said, pointing to the fact that the entire subsidy system is flawed and unfair as it disproportionately supports the richer farmers and regions across Europe. His position on this has now been vindicated by one of the largest and most comprehensive studies undertaken of the Cap.
Produced by Prof Mark Shucksmith of the University of Newcastle, it analyses who gets what by way of subsidy. Prof Shucksmith shows that the recent, much-vaunted reforms of the Cap have not altered the fact that the rich regions of northern Europe (France, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands) continue to take a much larger share of the pot than the poorer regions of Spain, Italy, and eastern Europe.
The pattern of larger and richer farms receiving higher subsidies is mirrored in Ireland. One useful aspect of the Cap reforms, and the move to the single farm payment, is that we can now see clearly for the first time who benefits most from all this largesse.
Figures produced over the summer show that top of the list for Ireland was none other than Larry Goodman, whose company Irish Agriculture Development is subsidised to the tune of a whopping half-a-million euro a year or €10,000 a week.
Farm subsidies in general are often presented as simply EU payouts, costing us in this country little or nothing. However, again the reality is otherwise. The Irish Government pays roughly one-third of the total subsidies bill, with its share set to become larger over the next few years.
Bertie Ahern's robust rebuttal of any attempts to reform the Cap means that these kinds of handouts, rather than reducing, will remain in place until at least 2013, costing Irish taxpayers more as each year goes by.
There is no joy for any of us either in the views of the Opposition. Enda Kenny surpassed even the Taoiseach by declaring in the Dáil that Tony Blair's attempts to reform the Cap were "simply outrageous". Presumably, Fine Gael also buys into the national myth that agriculture is hugely important to the Irish economy and that reducing farm incomes need all our efforts to support them.
A few figures here wouldn't go astray. Farm incomes (again according to the Teagasc farm survey) have increased this year by 5.4 per cent. The great majority of Irish farmers are part-time, with their incomes substantially enhanced by other forms of employment.
For those engaged in full-time farming, their incomes increased by almost 8 per cent. All of this quite clearly gives the lie to constant whinging from farmers that their incomes are declining - not to mention the bizarre references to police states and criminalisation.
And as for the part played by primary agriculture within the economy? Overall figures put it at just under 3 per cent of GDP. When you factor in the huge direct subsidy, and add to it the indirect support provided by consumers paying artificially higher prices, you reach a figure for the contribution of agriculture to the national economy that is perilously close to zero. Some economists have been pointing this out for years. It seems, however, that no one wants to listen.