You have to snatch away those moments of doubt, of weakness, that come when you let yourself realise that if this farm gives you €8,000 this year, you'll be lucky. In less than two decades, ordinary farmers have been forced to define themselves by ad
versity, quietly sliding forward while the foundations of a livelihood melt from under them. Is it a fool's pride? Or a silent dignity? Agriculture, our last national resource, is softly dying of thirst.
Larry O'Loughlin, the Limerick area manager for Teagasc, is a lifetime of joy and tragedy and knowledge and hope tucked in behind a dark wooden desk in a hot pink office. He's happy to sit you down and lay some of the pieces of his life on the table, over and under the booklets on grassland plans and sheep cobalt deficiency.
Over his left shoulder, along one side of a ceiling-high cabinet of thick folders and binders, is a mini shrine to his son, John, and his intercounty hurling and football career with Laois. The newspaper clippings belong to a father who has his priorities in order.
On the table in front of him, he taps the rhythm of that summer in Chicago in '72 when he worked with Mike Moran, who the yanks called Mor-An,and he ended up playing hurling with the Limerick seniors, of all people, winning a medal and scoring a goal.
From inside his heart, he summons the story of how it is Rossenallis in Laois and he is five-years-old and his father, Tom, is dead after an accident on the family farm. Experience is everything. It makes you who you are.
"I never had any positions to take on my own future. I wanted to be a farmer, and when I couldn't be a farmer the next best thing was to be an agricultural advisor. If you are brought up on a farm, raised on a farm and have seen the work that's involved, it is a big advantage when it comes to being an advisor.
"When I was in UCD in the '70s, 90 per cent of my agricultural science class came directly from farms. You have to know the business to understand the complexities."
O'Loughlin took up his position in Limerick in May after a distinguished career that has seen him go from farmer's son to advisor to policy work and back again. Coming from a family of ten, he knew he was too far down the queue to be able to earn his living off the land, so he got a degree, became a Teagasc advisor in 1977 and his ideas have been spiking ever since.
He was involved in the development of the suckler calf industry in the 1980s, when EU milk quotas trebled calf prices and nearly broke the beef industry. He was president of the Agricultural Science Association in 1990-91, and became a special advisor to the Junior Minister for Agriculture during the MacSharry CAP reform negotiations of 1992-93, which bred programmes like REPS and farm retirement and forestry schemes. He takes pride in his role in bringing these programmes together, and is equally disappointed to see budgets hack them apart.
"I would be particularly disappointed with the cuts to REPS. It was a compensatory measure under CAP reform back in 1992, and has very much been part and parcel of farm schemes ever since. In my opinion it's one of the best schemes ever introduced in Ireland. If you take the local point of view, there are 1,400 REPS farmers in Limerick. That equates to about €8 million going into rural Limerick every year. That money is going to disappear, and that's going to have a knock on for local traders."
The statistics for agriculture in Limerick, at the heart of the Golden Vale, point to a fertile and valuable industry. Primary farming in the county is worth €400 million, which translates into €1.2 billion once that output and produce works its way through the rest of the economy.
Of the county's 275,000 hectares, 73 per cent are used for farming. Limerick accounts for 7 per cent of national dairy production, with average farm size at 33 hectares, compared to the national average of 31.
However, in 2008 there were 5,700 farm holdings in Limerick, down 9 per cent from 6,200 in 2000. With milk prices at rock bottom, cuts in direct payments such as the suckler cow welfare scheme proposed by the McCarthy commission and a general resource drift away from the agriculture sector, does O'Loughlin think that farming has lost its traditional political capital?
"There's no doubt about that. That certainly manifested itself during the last ten years of the Celtic Tiger. But I was at the Tullamore Show last weekend, where there were probably 60 or 70,000 people and so many aspects of the industry on display for all to see. The Limerick and Cappamore Shows are coming up as well, and they'll show that same willingness to remain committed to the development of agriculture.
"But average incomes were down close to 14 per cent last year on dairy farms, and they will be down substantially again this year. Last year there was €500 million invested on farms, and in excess of €4 billion in the last three or four years. That is a huge debt on farms. You can never take a farmers' commitment for granted.
"The other issue that is raising its head is the lack of available off-farm employment for farmers. Farmers still have to live, put food on their table and educate their children. If there is no income in farming, then the industry can't survive."
replacing long-serving Limerick manager Fachnta O'Driscoll.
