Bryan targets a fairer share

John is not long into his four-year term as president of the IFA and he's already familiar with the hectic schedule he'll be expected to keep up. He was the guest speaker at the Cavan IFA AGM in the Lavey Inn last week, and The Anglo-Celt grabbed him for a few minutes before he went in to address the waiting farmers. He had just arrived from Dublin and had to return to the capital later that night for a 7am meeting on Tuesday. It's going to be tough, but once we had organised a bottle of Ballygowan for John, he was off, outlining his plans for his presidency and identifying the most pressing issues. "The priority for me is to get fair play from the retailers in the market place, to protect the government schemes and the Single Farm Payment... a combination of those over the next three or four years," said John. "A lad who's finding it hard to pay his debts today doesn't want to hear about the longer term but the reality is farming is a longer term game and you make an investment. On a personal level that's what I'd be hoping for over the period of the presidency, to move the game on a bit, get a realisation that you cannot produce food and sell it below the cost of production, and that's important to the European consumer as well - to have that safe supply of food." It's important to get that message out, said John. He said that when he started farming in 1980 he was getting a pound a pound for his produce (he runs an intensive suckler beef farm), but now the price is just above a pound though costs have risen by huge multiples in those three decades. The picture John wants to convey is "the realisation that if you want to get a sustainable agri-business, there has to be more in it for the farmer, that's a really big part of the message. "The consumer used to spend 30% of their income on food in 1980, but the latest CSO figures show it's 11-13%." Lobbying the retailers is one element of what John intends to do; the other is dealing with the government. He's met Minister Brendan Smith several times and appears to be developing a productive alliance with the Cavan man. "We'll do everything in our power to establish a good relationship," said John. "The minister was at our AGM in January and I thought there was a good cordial relationship. I've met him a couple of times since... on SFP, on compensation for the potato men. Top of the list was funding for government schemes and protection of the Single Farm Payment. "This is 2010 and the debate is starting on protection of the SFP, changes are due from 2013 and we have to get the government to lead a campaign on protecting the budget and protecting the distribution within the EU, and that's very important. Minister Smith "I was happy enough, now, that the minister did seem to be taking the same line as the IFA, a strong line on protecting the SFP and targeting it towards active farmers. That was one of the reasons we met the taoiseach too, to it point out to him." John says there is a more receptive mood towards agriculture in Leinster House these days than there was four or five years ago, when farming was "way down the list, behind IT, banking and services". "Now with the changed economic climate at all levels, within the department there's a new acceptance that agriculture makes a huge contribution to the economy. What you're taking about here is all the employment directly on-farm, agri-business, whether it's in Virginia here, dairy processing, food processing, beef processing... "It's a lot of jobs and they're seen as real jobs, and they bring in hard currency - the dairy sales, the beef sales, even the grain and the grain men had a terrible year, but that's all hard currency coming into the country. "That's being looked at in a new light and you find that the whole way through, from the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Finance, the Taoiseach's Department, there's a new acceptance that agriculture makes a huge contribution to the economy. "What we said to the government was about value for money: a euro put in agriculture will create more jobs, more exports, more hard currency, which is very important at a time like this."