Last Sunday saw the launch event of the Farmers’ Alliance, a new political initiative to bring rural voices back into Irish politics.
It follows a wave of rural discontent that is sweeping across Europe in the wake of EU-imposed ‘Green Transition’ policies, which have driven the landslide electoral victory for the farmers’ party in the Netherlands, as well as protests in Belgium and even Germany.
With over 300 people in attendance at the Athlone Spring hotel, there was a lively atmosphere. The host thanked for the participants for coming during a “very busy time of the year” for farmers, when many are occupied with the springtime work of planting and calving. The project wasn’t exclusive to farmers either. Representatives of the fishing and forestry industries were also present, as the initiative sought to include other primary producers. “The Farmers’ Alliance embraces all aspects of rural living, be it forestry, mining, fishing, or the rural way of life,” the group emphasised.
Local Anger
The speakers at the event had a long line of grievances on behalf of their professions and communities. Among them were issues such as the nightmarish self-contradicting over-regulation which is choking their work, the unstable and unsustainably low prices they receive for their produce, and the rural depopulation that is resulting in fewer and fewer young farmers.
“If anyone doesn’t think rural Ireland is being exterminated, you’re asleep!” said Cormac Power, a sheep farmer from Galway. This was met with applause. While the rural community is no stranger to its hardships, there was an unmistakable feeling in the crowd that too many of these issues had piled up, and that this time things were reaching a serious crisis point. Again and again, speakers warned of Ireland’s food production collapsing.
According to many of the speakers, a chief problem was the “villification of farmers.” Helen O’Sullivan, a cattle farmer who had come up from West Cork to speak, denounced the misinformation spread by elitist politicians and environmentalists, which always pointed to pollution and climate change as being the “farmers’ fault.” Waving printouts of pro-veganism posters, she highlighted their one-sided anti-farmer rhetoric:
“I hear they are blaming animal agriculture for climate change, which is totally wrong. We all know the number one emittor here in Ireland is Dublin airport. Do you see that in billboards? Have you seen it anywhere? No you haven’t.”
In spite of much of the anger being against the consequences of eco-alarmist Green Transition policies, the participants were far from being anti-environmentalist. In fact many of the farmers were deeply concerned with ecology, and had a deep knowledge of sustainable practices. Many were highly supportive of Irish farming’s organic status, and defended it on those grounds. One young Monaghan farmer, Stewart Waller, highlighted how Bord Bia forced Irish farmers to sell at world trade prices. As result, he said that Irish farmers are “competing against factory farms, such as the one in Texas, that was burnt down [killing] 18,000 cows… I feel this is a last chance for us all to get together and make Ireland a place where everybody has a sustainable future.”
Caroline Van Der Plas, the leader of the Netherlands’ recently victorious Citizen-Farmer Movement, echoed many of these points as she spoke to the event via video call. She constantly heard the Dutch political establishment and media “framing farmers for climate change, for being polluters, and animal abusers.” Yet during her years of work as an agricultural journalist she “saw farmers always doing what was right for their environment, for their people and communities, and for their animals.” She said that in response to this bias, “farmers need to speak with one voice in spite of their differences.”
One speaker, Brendan Guinan, spoke of his successes in running a biological forest farm. He said that he had found great success in employing nature-friendly methods, in increasing the productivity of the farm, its sustainability, and the quality of his food. He also recommended that farmers sell directly to consumers, and said that going forwards Irish farmers would need to really rethink how they conduct business. “The system that’s there currently, as everyone agrees, is broken, so everyone agrees that we have to design a new system. The logistics needed for that to be efficient, is what’s going to make or break it.”
Cross-partisan Policy
For the time being it appears that the Farmers’ Alliance has no intention of becoming an outright political party.
Speaking to many of the attendees and the organisers, they expressed their apprehension at the number of new parties being started in the country, and many said that they would only be willing to add to this number as a last resort. Instead, the organisers emphasised that the point was to unite and organise Irish farmers, giving them a voice, and being open to collaborate with any poiliticians or parties who would fight their corner.
While the Farmers’ Alliance is not likely to show up at the next ballot box, there is no doubt that they will become a considerable new anti-establishment force in an Irish politics, against a government which these days seems so totally captured by the destructive ignorance of south Dublin eco-alarmism.
Irish farmers are just an offspring of tenant farmers from the british empire, good little bread basket serfs. The majority of their produce gets sent abroad, some to islamic countries where they are butchered in disgusting ways.
Their lands are a reason why ireland is so deforested and has no soul.
Farmers and irish politicans sold their souls to the EU decades ago. Now they complain, too late.
The producing power of farmers should definetly be limited, over 90% of their produce gets sent abroad whilst they get fat and happy in their deforested shitholes.
But , but the money, the money? tell that to the cows being butchered through halal.
Farmers covered in cow shit, a country awash in alcohol and debt and mommy church saying take in the world = Ireland.
And before anyone says i am being a bit harsh on the culture of farmers and say i’m klaus schwab, well there should be no sacred cows when it comes to ridiculing the modern broken soulless culture of ireland.
Irish people should never forget that poor mouth farmers (rich in reality) sold ireland down the toilet decades ago with advocating EU membership with their buddies in FF. For what? rich farmers getting plump profits with feeding the Dutch, spanish, italians, belgians, britain, you name it.
They turned ireland into a commercialised bread basket even worse than britain did, irelands natural environment is whored out to the world, absent of native forests. The same with the fishing industry, FF sold that out too, irish waters FEED the spanish lol. INDEPENDENT sovereign country MY ASS. They went from one coloniser Great Britain to a new one the EU, with a tenant serf class spreading cow shit all over the roads to feed the dutch lol.
Ireland is a pretend country run by money grabbers.
Many farmers in Ireland are living in homes they inherited from their family, they have so much land, they could easily become self-sufficient
as many of them do not even have a mortgage AND INHERIT THE FAMILY HOME with loads of fertile acres to plant seeds and grow food on.
A bunch of cry babies is what they are, pure greed that want the big houses on mommy and daddy lands with big mortgages to keep up with the jones. As i said GREED, they don’t want to live within their means, the big JOHN DEERE OR FORD, the leather boots, THE MORTGAGE are more important, oh and the pints, this culture desaerves ridicule, rich farmers with poor mouths, FAR FROM IT, that they are poor, their lands are rich, fertile, damn well the british knew it too.
Farmers gain profits by selling their produce abroad, to britain, china and middle eastern countries and every european country in the EU likely. Climate change is absolute bullshit, but in a spiritual sense the landscape of Ireland has been whored out to the highest bidders through argicultarism historically, irish farmer culture are just a legacy of great britains tenant farmer system.
The majority of Ireland was held by british landlords, around 90% in the 19th century, and rented out to tenant farmers who had to pay rent to landlords and taxes to the Church of Ireland and State.
Irish farmers = tenant farmers who were given cheap mortgages in the early 20th century, they have aquired vast amounts of land which remains deforested because irelands natural environment was whored to the world through argicultarism and colonialism.
Farmers should be required by law to plant native trees, with full roaming rights given to the public like in sweden whose nature is on another level compared to the shithole deforested ireland.
Farmers should be limited to the amount of produce they are producing and selling abroad, i say that as someone who thinks climate change is bullshit and despises the green party. Ireland is the most deforested country in europe because of colonialism, a country that is whored out to the world and whose nature has been butchered by farmers and fenced in electrically with cattle sent off to the middle east being butchered through halal.
Look at all the butter produce that germany takes, ireland is europes bitch.
BUT THE GDP, BUT THE GDP, SAYS THE ECONOMIST INDUSTRIALISTS. ireland has been sold out a LONG TIME AGO, you can be sure of that, its future is going to a urbanised third world dumping ground and sealed off bug factories where you vill be served fake meat and ze bugs, with africans roaming around the steets calling themselves kings of ireland.
Vast amounts of fake non-native forests from coillte have already been sold, a wood producing machine now farmed out to the world.
But shur everything will be grand, what you having paddy? Guinness is it, a drum of heineken lol. DRUNK pretend country, sold to foreigners.
Our lovely sheep and cows being butchered with glee by these ISIS savages. Remember albert reynolds and Haughey and the halal longford abbatoirs, if you build it – they come. I cannot think of anything worse, and their journey in an metal truck in SCORCHING HEAT in those godforsaken countries. FUCK these people, they would be fucked over royally ( pardon the pun) By the dublin crown eventually. Good little bread basket makers. Greens at it too choking farmers, no inheritance to leave their offspring now. No family heirloom. We have sold our souls. What seperates us from the African in that regard? We sell our souls. We sold our land our food, we could be a gem a tourist and agri gem, a real independent nation like the swiss, why couldn’t we do that, we are too beholden to the Anglo.
I see people in the comments talking about farming as if it’s to blame for everything. I wonder if they even know any farmers? Let’s look at one or two points: the use of electric fence. Farmers have to keep livestock from getting out of the fields. If livestock get out on the road and cause an accident, the farmer is liable. He is also liable if urban-dwellers trespass on his lands leaving gates open or breaking fences and acting as if it’s their human right to wander where they will, and animals get out. I’ve even sen people bringing their dogs up the mountains and letting them off the leash, regardless of the fact there were sheep grazing on the hillside – the same type of urbanite Green-party voting public that then think they had a lovely day out in nature and got in touch with their nature roots! If a farmer has a hedgerow and something falls off it – he’s liable. If a tree growing on the hedgerow is blown down in a storm on someone or a car – the farmer is liable. Until fairly recently a farmer was liable even if trespassers injured themselves crossing his lands uninvited. Thankfully at least some bit of sense was finally seen here and farmers can now erect signs stating they accept no liability. The only ones benefiting from all this were the insurance companies. People who are not into farming have no idea of the amount of red tape and bureaucracy faced by farmers these days – there’s hardly time left to actually plant and tend crops.
People moaning about the slaughter of livestock (ie animal rights activists) rarely have any problem in my experience with the slaughter of over 30,000 of our own unborn human beings since the 8th Amendment was repealed here – that’s around 6,000 a year over the last 5 years. Strange priorities! In any case, if they also buy into climate change, and blame the livestock for pollution – what do they think will happen to the livestock? There’s plan to initially cull (ie slaughter) 200,000 livestock initially, but the final plan calls for a cull closer to 1,000,000 head of livestock.
If our farming and food industry is destroyed here, we will be totally reliant on imported food, and once we are not self-sufficient we cannot guarantee prices will remain as they do today, while we still have some choice. During WW2 while there was rationing of things like fruit, petrol and so on and times were tough, thanks to our agricultural society and self-sufficiency, no one starved. We might not be so lucky the next time round.