You can, no one is going to stop you going out protesting. SO many people complain about the cuts that are happening, and yet these same people will complain when people go out as protest.

“no one is going to stop you going out protesting” have a feeling your boss might stop you is the protest is on during your working hours.

PJKDUBLIN

Please get your facts right before you post ridiculous statements and untrue facts. Europe is trying to protect Agriculture in Europe. Why? It’s unfair isn’t it. NO

In Europe the farmers are subsidised because of all the restrictions put on farming in Europe, for example chemicals are not allowed in Europe if they are unsafe but they are used in Asia, Africa north america and South America. This means the food is not as safe. Beef cattle in America is full of hormones so that the cattle will be bigger and fatter. This is banned in Europe. In Africa the harvest of corn or maize, this is exported all over the world. There is no traceability which means it doesn’t meet European standards. I’ve seen pictures where it is transported in trucks where toxic material has been. The food isn’t safe. In china there was a baby food producer that poisoned 1000’s of babies because the milk was contaminated. WHAT IF THIS WAS YOUR BABY?

European food is safe, it’s got to meet a standard if it doesn’t Europe will not import that food. European food is 100% traceable. It means the meat you eat you can trace it back to farm that animal came from.

If you look at USA, the farmers are seen as the most important people in the country. A tractor and combine has preference over cars on the highways. If the farmer has a bad year the government protects him by increasing the tariff’s on imported food. Europe does not do this, it is an open market.

If you think I’m talking s**t, I’ve travelled to USA, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, china, Japan and Turkey looking at farming in these countries.

WHO DO YOU BLAME IF ONE OF YOU FAMILY DIES FROM POOR QUALITY FOOD.

…. because we don’t have an organising body that is respected on all.
The farmers didn’t even seem to have a cohesive message, but they know they need to stick together. The rest of us are pitted against each other.

The number of small farms are decreasing reason no 1 imagine after getting newly married and to start a family, the profit from this farm will not rear a family and pay for a house
Reason number 2 the investment needed to bring farm building s/ slurry storage up to eu standards would not justify most small holding s . I may be corrected but I think that is the main reasons

If the government pull the subsidies that farmers should get a better price. Farmers today sell it for 30cent a litre tesco sell it for 1.14 a litre. Give the farmer 60 or 70cent then there would be no need for the subsidies. Same goes for beef same goes for wheat and barley. If supermarkets don’t pay a fair price well then what can the farmer do! Nobody in the EU has stood up to the supermarkets! They’ve got record profits and screw the farmers!

One minute we complain that sugar skyrocketed in price and next we complain that the farmer doesn’t get enough for milk.

It is not governments job to micromanage the economy

Shouldn’t he also be in school ?

When do the government ever take notice of protesters?

Dale Maguire
If there are enough people out protesting ,they will take notice !
Everyone should get to protests. Each person is important .

Dale
The “protesting doesn’t work” argument is a fallacy.
They did a turn around for people with disabilities and (the previous gov) turned around for the elderly.
Guess the degree to which they notice is directly proportional to the number of votes they see ebbing away.

300,000 people are connected to the farming community and make there living from the farming community. Very small section on the country indeed.

So which Minister represents the interests of 450,000 unemployed and their dependants.

Rubbish comment he s the minister for agriculture if you haven’t noticed

Bingo. We pay taxes to farming subsidies, then pay taxes on food, then wonder why food prices are extortionate/bad quality.

Are you serious ? Farmers are the hardest working people in this country and get very little money and respect for the work they do. Cop-on

You do understand that the money comes from Europe and that farmers in other European countries also receive this money?

Dubs, Townies and Culchies.

Neat society classifications.

Dubs and townies think that milk is propogated in plastic bottles and eggs are grown in cardboard cartons.
What maybe they don’t know is that food is subsidised in order that they can afford to eat and this has been European Governments policy since the 2nd world war. Without that subsidy. PJdub and Michael Bingo a much higher proportion of your income would be used for food. It’s not like cars and tv’s we can’t import cheap food from China. In fact we can’t import cheap food from anywhere unsubsidised. So think on lads. Don’t concrete over the back lawn just yet.

where do ye think all the food like milk,cheese,veg,meat come from on your shelves,,your local shop doesn’t just throw this stuff together out the back. Farmers work every day of the year against massive pressures to keep your presses full of food and this is the thanks they get for it. Maybe ye lads should try it for a few weeks and see how ye get on.

Apologies Josh i meant to green thumb you instead of red, whole heartedly agree with you.

Your comment highlights your ignorance and lack of knowledge of farming in Europe. If there were no farmers then you would have no food, there would be no alcohol, no clothes in the shops, no leather goods nothing!!!! Everything we buy apart from mined minerals and oil comes from farming. Fruit, meat milk, bread, beer, wine, linen, wool, cotton, leather. All you would have in tesco is plastic.

Let me compare a farmers situation to yours. The price of milk today is 30 cent a litre, (the price the farmers sells it at) the price of milk 30 years ago was the same. Imagine your wages staying the same for 30 years with everything getting more expensive. Also if you look at a dairy farmer he works 18 hrs a day 7 days a week. I bet there isn’t too many here that would do that for the same wages for the last30 years.

The farmers deserve a fair price! If they don’t get it then they get subsidised for their products! Remove the subsidies then I can guarantee you Ireland will not produce milk or beef anymore.

Finally I leave you with a good fact, Ireland is the number 1 exporter of baby food in the world. WHY? Our milk is the best in the world, it’s so good it’s safe for your kids

@Helen – lots of people work hard Helen. Why don’t we subsidise nurses? Soldiers? Guards? If farmers can’t get a market return from what they produce then they either need to get out of the business or produce what the market’s willing to pay.

@Kerry – pretty naive argument Kerry. The money doesn’t come from some magic European money-tree. It comes from taxes paid by the citizens of Europe. Oh, and by the by – this is yet another massive subsidy from the Germans, Danes, Dutch etc. to the Irish and Club Med countries. Eventually Gerhardt Taxpayer is going to put a stop to propping up dysfunctional peripheral countries who can’t stand on their own.

@Josh – the current CAP regime is an utter disgrace. It penalises European taxpayers and the poor in Europe by on the one hand requiring massive direct cash transfers, while at the same time blocking competitively priced imports of food from the Third World. On that point – EU farmers are DIRECTLY responsible for keeping farmers in the Third World in poverty by denying their produce access to the world’s largest and richest economy.

I’m sorry folks, but the current agricultural system in the EU is probably THE most indefensible part of the EU and one that is absolutely riddled with selfishness, corruption, and an attitude towards the Third World that should make the IFA ashamed of itself.

@ PJdub

You really are a jackeen aren’t you.

‘ penalises the poor in europe’ how excatly does that happen reverse osmosis maybe. If the growing of food is subsidised without the subsidy it would be dearer.
‘competitively priced imports of food from the Third World’ Love to know what type of foods we can import from the third world. Oh let me guess Sugar !. Yeah i forgot. When the EU removed subsidies from eu sugar and effectively closed the european sugar beet industry we imported it from third world suplliers ( not 3rd world farmers by the way) and what happened. Doooh the price of sugar doubled.
Really sound arguments

PJKDublin, the guards, defense forces and public sector nurses are not subsidised by the state because they are payed for totally by the state.
If we were to totally remove subsities, we would lose our food security and food would become like oil, a nessesity we have no control over.
You can try to guilt us over the third world but if Europe started to buy the mainstay of its food from there, what effect would you think it would have on their food prices, massive inflation that’s what.

PJK we don’t subsidise nurses and guards because they get paid generous and regular incomes . Farmers get paid for what they produce and as i only hope you too noticed that we had the worst summer ever and farmers work is all done outside, you could see that produce would not only be down this year but also be of poor quality, through no fault of the farmers. So tell me how they can earn money on the same level as a nurse or guard or whoever.
And to suggest all farmers just pack it is just stupid . I

@diarmuid Brennan , I don’t disagree with the sentiment of your argument but milk was 16p a pint in 1982. So if farmers were selling it at the same price as today the were seriously cleaning up !!

People work hard in every sector. Those of you who think that food would be more expensive without the subsidies know very little about economics.

This money could be better used to lower peoples tax burden.

CAP is corporatism at its finest.

People work hard in every sector. Those of you who think that food would be more expensive without the subsidies know very little about economics.

This money could be better used to lower peoples tax burden.

CAP is corporatism at its finest.

Diarmuid

“Your comment highlights your ignorance and lack of knowledge of farming in Europe.”

Your comment highlights your lack of knowledge of economics and logic.

There, I can make blanket statements too.

that is complete Rubbish. you won’t be saying that the next time you go to the supermarket to buy food for yourself or your family. farmers are not the reason why food is expensive. Get your facts straight before you shoot off: Actually they are very special people: farmers. Hope you get to know one in your lifetime. Anyone that works 365 days a year has to be someone special. Perhaps you secretly want to be a farmer??? This reaction is typical of some Irish people who believe that their existance is the only one that matters, Shame on you. … …..

If they get cut the price of food will double. Guaranteed.

Why in the world do young people go into farming if the work is so hard and the hours are so crazy and there is no money in it? Surely they’re seen their parents and neighbors struggle all their lives with the life?

so you don’t like farmers but you like what they do,,maybe if they produce all this food for nothing it might cheer you up a bit

What’s stopping you Mary?

you’re a clown

I’d love to see you get up a 2am on a Sunday morning to assist a cow calving.

Then every day milk your cows at 6am and them again at 5pm. Starting your day at 5:30 and finishing at 20:00 and working 7 days a week. In all weather, cold, wet, dark nights. And best of all get a maximum 400-500 a week for it.

Farmers can’t got on holidays if they do they’ve got to pay someone a weeks wages to do the work they should be doing. If they go on holidays it will cost them a week wages plus what the holiday costs.

First of all I support the farmers in this.
But diarmuid, you are full of it. In my job I have to be on call so yes, I often have to get up in the middle of the night to work. Many many people are the same. Don’t make out that they work harder than me. They don’t.
The milking the cows at 6 am and 5 pm is a nice line but what exactly do they do in between?

Ah Vinny thats a silly comment, you need a herd number and a holding pen and crush first, your simple observation was .. well too simple.

I have a better idea what s stopping you from renting a bit off ground and farm it move out of town for six months and then you might come out with better ideas than talking about lawns