For farmers, it was the defining event of the year: 40,000 of them marching through Dublin to shake urban Ireland out of its apathy towards their ever worsening plight.

It was an impressive show of unity as some of the State's wealthiest landowners walked shoulder to shoulder with small farmers for whom 1998 will go down as one of the blackest in memory.

But when the speeches were over and normal commercial life had been restored to the capital, it was hard to escape the conclusion that small and large farmers won't be marching together too often in the future. Both are already headed in entirely different directions.

For the top third of farmers, including the elite who claimed European Union support payments of £150,000 and more, it was a relatively difficult year. For the rest, it was much worse than that.

A 4 per cent decline in incomes, as estimated by the Central Statistics Office, masked severe difficulties in a large number of cattle and sheep farms, according to Teagasc, the State research body.

After the furore of recent weeks, many might be surprised to know that in the nine months to September cattle prices were higher than in 1997. But then the collapse of the Russian beef market caused prices to plunge to a 25-year low.

Pig farmers saw prices drop to their lowest for 20 years because of an over-supply on world markets and a downturn in the Asian economy; tillage farmers had what might be termed a middling year; while the dairy sector remained dynamic and profitable.

But even dairy farmers won't emerge unscathed in 1999, Teagasc economist Liam Connolly has predicted. And livestock and tillage farmers may have reason to recall 1998 with a warm nostalgic feeling for the good old days.

The first three months will be crucial in determining not just what 1999 will be like but also how many of Ireland's 140,000 farmers have a long-term future on the land - and particularly how many of those small farmers marching in Dublin in October have any future at all.

Negotiations on the EU Commission's Agenda 2000 proposals, which aim to continue the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy begun by former Commissioner Ray MacSharry, are due to be completed by the end of March.

The IFA, which vigorously fought the MacSharry reforms despite the obvious benefits which immediately followed - when "compensation" was paid for price drops which initially didn't happen - will be in full campaign mode again.

A spokesman said a "very strong resistance" to Agenda 2000 would be mounted early in the year. "These proposals would fundamentally shift the CAP to a GATT-friendly system of supports that would involve low prices, free trade and a greater reliance on direct payments for essentially social farming," he said.

For once, the IFA is not exaggerating. By "GATT-friendly" the spokesman meant the EU is paving the way for the next world trade agreement, which will pitch European farmers into more open competition with their counterparts in the US and New Zealand, where 15,000-acre ranches are not uncommon.

It's easy to see why in Ireland, where a 200-acre holding is considered large, a substantial reduction in the number of farmers is considered inevitable.

Fears about the effects of Agenda 2000 are backed by Teagasc, whose economists have predicted that the proposals - which include further cuts in guaranteed prices in return for direct income payments from Brussels - would lead to a drop in Irish farm incomes of 20 per cent by 2007.

But how many farmers will be around by then? In a recent study commissioned by the IFA, Dr Jim Phelan, head of agri-business and rural development at University College Dublin, said 14,000 farmers would have to leave the land because their holdings weren't viable.

He added, however, that a further 37,000 middle-sized producers, with farms of between 50 and 100 acres, who could be viable if given urgent additional support, were also struggling for survival.

A Department of Agriculture spokesman accepted that some "concentration" of smaller farms in the west of Ireland was inevitable, but predicted an increase in part-time farming rather than a wholesale flight from the land.

OTHERS say it's inevitable that by early next century Ireland will have about 30,000 full-time commercial farmers and maybe 50,000 more relying on off-farm income and schemes like REPS, which pays up to £9,000 a year to farmers who meet certain environmental criteria.

Some will shed no tears at the thought that there might not be 40,000 farmers around to march in the future. However, Dr Phelan says we should look at the "big picture", part of which is that people forced out of rural areas end up contributing to city problems like traffic congestion and rising house prices.

He agrees that it does not make sense for the taxpayer to keep small farmers on unviable holdings in perpetuity, but says support should continue until alternative employment structures are in place in rural areas. Schemes like the LEADER programme were a start, he says, but otherwise we've hardly begun to focus on this issue.

Farmers, of course, are looking at a big picture of their own. How many of them it's big enough to accommodate. Time will tell.