Sponsored by
The Leader Interview..with Larry O'Loughlin
IT takes something more, you know, to keep scraping yourself off that mattress at 4.30am when you know that milk prices have fallen through the floor.
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 adversity, 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.
After 50 years of teaching, innovating and developing best practice on farms, O'Loughlin is confident that Teagasc has the juice to keep Irish agriculture one step ahead of the bitterest travails. But he is in no doubt that the challenges ahead are fierce and generational.
"We are an innovative organisation and it's up to us to see how we can adapt to circumstances. But this is the most serious (situation] we've had to deal with. People can try and resist change, but it is still going to happen. There were major changes with the milk super levy and the MacSharry reforms, and now we're going through another period of major change. But I'm a firm believer in the resilience of Irish farming, and if we work together we can meet these challenges."
It was the vision of Dr Tom Walsh, the first director of An Foras Taluntais, to bridge the gap between scientific advances and farm practices so that output and profits could grow.
Fifty-one-years later, with programmes for herd management, breeding advice, soil and grass analysis, budgeting assistance and face-to-face consultations, Teagasc has evolved into the visible hand that is guiding the future of an industry.
Still, change is what human systems do. For Teagasc to remain crucial, innovation must stay at its core: "From a Teagasc point of view, our programmes reflect very much the need in the coming years for farmers to adjust and adapt to economic conditions. I would look at things like the Rooster potato, which is one of the most popular brands of potato in the world, which was developed by Teagasc in Oak Park in Carlow. We have huge potential in health food milk products, things like bio-yoghurts and that, which have been developed in collaboration with the food industry. These are all potential growth areas for us."
O'Loughlin stresses that Teagasc is not straining to teach farming prudence while ignoring it themselves. In tough times, the organisation too is looking inward to nip and tuck.
"We're a semi-state body, and that means that there are plans to cut the number of staff and offices we operate from, and since the public service recruitment ban came we haven't been able to replace staff who've left. We are looking at our own organisation and seeing where we can get the best value for taxpayer money, while at the same time providing as good a service as we can."
He doesn't want to harp or become the messenger of false doom, but he does not disagree when the words of Colm Toibin are put to him, that An Bord Snip Nua knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
He has seen difficulty before, and he and others have broke it and moulded it into something better. But the collective powers that be, be they government or agencies or whoever, need to realise that there is a social dynamic at play here too, and to consign the livelihood of rural Ireland to a column in a ledger would be a tragedy.
"As a young advisor I started off working in the Slieve Bloom area of county Laois, which were difficult farming conditions. The disadvantaged area payments were a significant part in maintaining income in those areas, and I think it's a pity that we're seeing a reduction in payments through that scheme. They are designated for a very valid reason. The land is poor, the population densities are lower. There isn't access to public transport or supermarkets or other services.
"Here, it could mean around a loss of €1.5 million in income going in to rural Limerick. Farmers will continue farming with lower incomes. But subconsciously, they're depleting their reserves; the tools for farming in the future. They're going to reduce stock numbers, they're not going to re-seed grassland. We have to appreciate the difficulties farmers can experience."
O'Loughlin's experience of the whole process has given him enough currency to be both pensive and direct. It breeds an empathy in him for the stresses of the farmers he meets, and in them a respect for the advice he is giving.
"Farming is still a really good way of life, a healthy way of life. But the chain of generations in farming have to keep going. Farming is our oil."
PERSONAL FILE
Home: Portlaoise. Commutes to Limerick.
Family: Wife Mary, one son John, and three daughters, Miriam, Lucy and Claire.
Other achievements: Fromer vice-chairman of Self Help Development and member of African development group VITA. Was previously a CAO for Teagasc in Wicklow and Kildare before
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Weather for Limerick
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 7 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 6 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South east
