The Irish Farmers' Association is to mount a major lobbying and publicity campaign to highlight the losses the economy and its members face in the new reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy.
The IFA president, Mr Tom Parlon, said the Government accepted its estimates that the Agenda 2000 reforms could take £600 million out of the agricultural economy.
At the organisation's a.g.m. in the Green Isle Hotel, Dublin, Mr Parlon outlined a strategy which would involve lobbying all TDs and "aspiring county councillors and MEPs" over the next few weeks.
"We are going to turn up the heat in these negotiations and we are not going to buy into the reform package. The last time, in 1992, we were told there was going to be a bright future, but the reality was different," he said.
"Once bitten, twice shy," said Mr Parlon, who said farmers were deeply frustrated and angry and young people were walking away from a future in farming. He urged his county executives to hold emergency meetings to generate political and public awareness of the major threat facing the entire country, not just farming.
The president was critical of the handling by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, of the negotiations and said; "I want to see a lot more fire from the Minister for Agriculture than we have seen from him in the recent past." He said that because of the gravity of the situation, he had proposed to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, on Wednesday that he take a leading role in the negotiations which intensify over the next six weeks.
He outlined the IFA's proposals aimed at effective supply control to achieve market balance and avoid surpluses, minimising price cuts. Where prices were cut, losses would be compensated for by direct payments.
The proposals, he said, were aimed at protecting grass-based producers and protecting the 100 per cent EU financing of the CAP.
Mr Parlon said that farmers in all sectors of the economy suffered losses this winter and, in addition to the cuts proposed by the EU, the poor winter would cost farmers £140 million.