Local farmers rebel over IFA Lisbon stance

Two men from north Westmeath are among a number of disgruntled farmers across the country who have organised themselves to campaign against the IFA's decision to support the re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum.Paddy Boyhan of Ranaghan, Collinstown and Noel McCabe of Glenidan have aligned themselves with the "Farmers for No" group (www.farmersforno.blogspot.com), which is led by Edgeworthstown farmer, James Reynolds.Mr. Boyhan, an organic and suckler cow farmer, is one of the group's committee members. He is a veteran member of the United Farmers' Association - a farmers' lobby group set up as an alternative to the IFA twenty years ago.Mr. McCabe, a former Westmeath Representative on the IFA's National Industrial and Environment Committee, was elected as Treasurer for the group, which had its official launch in Dublin last week.Recalling reports that half of farmers had voted against the Lisbon Treaty last year, Paddy Boyhan reckons that "Farmers for No" speaks for the majority of farmers this time around, in light of savage cuts being imposed on small farmers in recent months.He said that long-term EU agricultural policies, enshrined in the Mansholt Plan of the 1960s, were designed to force small farmers off the land, and are coming to fruition now - to be copperfastened by Lisbon."People at the bottom are going to be worst hit. Farmers depending on agriculture alone are on low income as it is, and now they have to deal with higher levies, the withdrawal of REPS and the suckler cow scheme," Mr. Boyhan said. "All the things we're depending on are going down the swanny."Central to the "Farmers for No" group's campaign against Lisbon is its argument that the treaty will create the legal conditions for Turkish accession to the EU, doubling the number of farmers in the Union, and devastating farming livelihoods in Ireland.Mr. Boyhan describes the IFA's decision to back Lisbon as disappointing, but not surprising."It's a top-down organisation. They're completely divorced from reality," he said. "There's always one or two powerful groups telling you the sunshine is better on the other side of the hill."But where were the IFA when the Beef Tribunal was called nineteen years ago? Where were they when the sugar industry was allowed to collapse, and now when there's a shortage of sugar?"Since we joined the EEC in 1973 the number of people working in farming in this country has been decimated. But we're not all going to be led hook, line and sinker to the slaughter."