FARMERS' ARGUMENT:Margins are shrinking for food producers, writes Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent.
THE IRISH farming organisations agree on one thing, and that is farmers are not responsible for rising food prices.
They also say that little or none of the hefty increases faced by consumers in the recent past are being passed back to them. They also argue that despite escalating input costs for fuel and fertiliaser, their incomes have not risen accordingly and the markets are not returning those levels of increases to them.
The enormous rise in consumer milk prices at Irish supermarkets is a specific case in point. This started last year when a global shortage of dairy products drove producer prices from a very low base to a point where farmers were receiving up to 37 cent a litre.
However, since earlier this year the prices being paid to farmers has dropped back by seven cent per litre, according to president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, Jackie Cahill.
"I guarantee you will find no supermarket or shop that has dropped the consumer price by seven cent in the last few months. It looks as if the consumer will be faced with paying the highest price possible," he said.
Mr Cahill added that the litre of milk best demonstrates the position of the primary producer in the food chain. "Basically, the farmer gets one-third of the consumer price, the processor the second third and the supermarkets, which do not even handle milk because its put on the shelves for them by the dairies, get the other third."
The role of large multiple retailers in the food crisis is one of the issues being addressed in a report for the European Parliament being prepared by Leinster Fine Gael MEP, Mairead McGuinness.
"Everyone talks of rising food prices, few realise that input costs for the world's farmers and food producers are on the increase due to higher energy and fertiliser prices and that is the real reason," said Ms McGuinness.
"Unless this issue is identified and addressed we risk facing an even worse crisis, where rising costs of production will force farmers to reduce input use and in turn, production will fall leading ultimately to even higher food prices," she said.
Just what a World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement would have done for food prices is open to debate. However, speaking before the collapse of the WTO talks, an Irish Farmers Association spokesman said that logically, if non-EU countries were allowed export huge quantities of beef into the Union, then the prices being paid should fall.
"When Brazil was going at full tilt on the market before it was banned because of foot-and-mouth disease, beef farmers here were badly hit because they were taking our European markets from us and suppressing the prices we were getting from the factories," he said. "However, the price the Irish housewife was paying for her steak in the supermarket did not drop one penny because of that, so there was no real gain for the Irish consumer there."