Farmers tend to be astute amateur meteorologists, but also keen readers of political headwinds.
On a grey morning in Bandon Mart, Co Cork most were next-to-certain that the general election will be called in the coming weeks; there was less agreement as to whether that is a wise move.
Liam Byrne has travelled down from Edenderry in Co Offaly to buy some calves. Unlike others, he’s happy to display his political affiliation, declaring himself a Fine Gael supporter.
“It will be in the next four or five weeks,” he says of the prospect of an election.
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“Definitely. That’s the vibe I’m hearing. I’m very disappointed with the last giveaway budget – it stinks of Fianna Fáil.”
That said, he likes Taoiseach Simon Harris and believes he is more on the farmers’ wavelength than his predecessor.
As for the farmer view of the Green Party, one of Fine Gael’s Coalition partners, Byrne is blunt: “They don’t like them,” he says, a view shared by many of those buying and selling on the mart floor.
John O’Driscoll from nearby Kilbrittain is selling two calves and is keeping a safe eye on his livestock as they move through the pens.
“I think they should go into the next year a bit,” he says of the current Government. “Let there be a fair competition because Sinn Féin are making a b*****ks of it at the moment,” O’Driscoll tells The Irish Times.
He sees Sinn Féin’s current travails as inhibiting their main job – “holding people to account”.
As to the Government’s performance, he describes it as “not very good, in a way”, though he also expresses some praise for Harris: “The best there was for a long time”.
O’Driscoll is milking 50 cows, around the same number as a decade ago – a rare phenomenon given the explosion in the dairy sector since the scrapping of quotas.
He says the Green Party – both in policies and personnel – doesn’t chime with rural Ireland, and that voters might be inclined to swing towards Independent candidates, “though maybe not so much now since Harris came in”.
He is one of the few to mention immigration , but adds that it doesn’t impact farmers so much, and certainly not as much as the rules and regulations imposed by the EU and and other parties.
In the clatter of the sales ring, the bidders are leaning on to the railings, their hands surely at risk of carpal spasm as they constantly signal to the auctioneer.
Back up in the wooden seats, Richard White of Tullineaskey near Clonakilty is taking it all in. He is selling 10 dry cows and agrees that input costs have been the main bugbear for farmers, but he is one of the few to strike a somewhat conciliatory tone towards the Green Party, even if he agrees that “it’s probably true” that farmers generally have no time for the junior Coalition party.
“Climate change is a reality and we have to deal with that,” he says.
Not too far away, Kieran Butler of Kilbrittain and James Collins of Ballinspittle are watching some of the animals being unloaded. For Butler, “there is always room for improvement” when it comes to the current Government, though he says Harris appears to have “brought a bit of life” back to his party.
“There are a few own goals though,” Collins says, referring to the ballooning costs of the national children’s hospital and the splurges on the Oireachtas security and bike shelters.
Helen Twohig of Bandon Camogie Club is fundraising outside the mart restaurant and a recent food-related event assured her that the election campaign is already under way.
“Friday night, Taste of Bandon [Festival launch], Munster Arms [Hotel] – politicians galore,” she says.
Mart manager Seán Dennehy believes farmers are probably more optimistic now than 12 months ago, a shift pushed by improving prices in dairy and more lately in the beef and sheep sectors.
“I think there is still fair support from the farming community for the pillar parties,” he says.
“There are some red-line issues for farmers: I think one of them is probably the nitrates derogation, especially among dairy farmers, and profitability for the beef and the sheep lads as well.”
Looking around the mart, there are few women and even fewer young people.
Kieran Butler believes more will have to be done to attract younger farmers.
“The bottom line is now, young people, it’s their choice – they’re either into it or they’re not,” he says.
Another issue is planning permission for people to stay living in rural areas, which he says is a “big problem” – “to build or buy an house has gone out of the reach of a working- or middle-class family”.
Yet he says the rural-urban “divide” is “possibly overplayed”. And, just maybe, so is the speculation over the election?
One man candidly remarks, “I have no interest in politics”, while another says he hadn’t had a canvasser to the door “in years”.
Yet most of those traipsing through in their wellies seemed tuned into the likelihood of polling cards and pamphlets, of knocks on the door in the darkening evenings and a winter campaign in full swing.
But then again, there are the indifferent: “What election?” says another man. “I couldn’t give a s***e.”
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