The Beef Plan Movement is bewildered by a recent statement from Brian Leddin. The Green Party TD accused farmers of being ‘the tail wagging the dog’ when it comes to their influence on Government policy regarding biodiversity loss. He went on to state that farming is largely irrelevant as it only accounts for 1% of GDP. The insinuation is that farming is now so irrelevant that farmers should not have a say on policy decisions that directly impact them.
Firstly, we would like to point out the hypocrisy of this statement coming from a political party which so few Irish people voted for. They occupy just 12 seats in Parliament but still have the defining influence on Government policy. They even managed to occupy the position of junior minister for Agriculture with a candidate who failed to get elected. We believe it is the Green Party who are the tail wagging the dog.
Secondly we would like to point out that while Agriculture does account for just 1% of GDP when you use the leprechaun economics metric(as described by the Financial Times),you get a different picture when you look at indigenous industry. Last year over 9.5% of Ireland’s total goods exported came from agriculture. Our food and drink industry accounted for a revenue of €37m per day for the state and created employment for over 200,000 people. Almost 50% of our indigenous exports from Irish owned companies are food and drink related. When one extracts foreign multinationals,we see how vital a role agriculture plays in the Irish economy.
Finally, Mr Leddin listed 10 birds which are endangered by ‘intensive agriculture ‘ in his native Limerick. I too am from Limerick. The majority of Limerick consists of grassland and hedgerows with some hills on the periphery. 7 of the 10 birds he listed (i.e. shoveler, red grouse, dunlin)are native to bogs, wetlands, estuaries and moors. The areas where farming is carried out intensively in Limerick have few if any of these habitats. The greatest incursion into these hillside and bog habitats have been the widespread planting of sitka spruce forests and the erecting of hundreds of wind turbines which require thousands of tonnes of concrete and stone for the supporting infrastructure.
Mr Leddin also failed to acknowledge the impact the mink is having on birdlife habitats. Many of these were unwittingly released into the wild by animal activists. These creatures have massacred vast numbers of wild birds especially ground nesting birds. This is something we see on a daily basis and any farmer with poultry will no doubt have come in contact with the mink. There are currently proposals in Government for a cull in the mink population, which is a direct result to the destruction the mink is having on wildlife.
We are disappointed Mr Leddin has adopted the lazy route in blaming farmers for all our biodiversity issues. Farmers do want to protect nature.This has been evident in the demand for environmental schemes such as the recently introduced ACRES scheme which was oversubscribed. However, trying to exclude farmers from the decision making process should not be tolerated. Farmers are custodians of the countryside. The family farm model in Ireland has been crucial to protecting the biodiversity we have. This is in stark contrast to industrial agriculture we see in other countries.