Roger Casement, then a member of the British Consular Service, predicted in his Amazon Journal (ed. Angus Mitchell, p. 433) in 1910: "The vale of the Amazon will become one of the greatest granaries of the world. It supplies practically for the asking all the essentials of human existence." Martin Mansergh writes.
Brazilian agricultural production is growing rapidly, challenging the livelihood of more subsidised European farmers. While rising Brazilian beef imports - largely free of the health traceability, wage, and environmental controls to which EU farmers are subject - depress beef prices, Brazilian sugar production has captured 29 per cent of the world market. Brazil is one of a number of countries, by no means poor, successfully complaining to the World Trade Organisation about European export subsidies.
Irish and European farmers are as entitled to look to their governments to defend the viability and well-being of their industry, with due regard to consumer interests, with the same vigour as do those countries - some of them vast - with the fewest climatic disadvantages.
The Treaty of Rome is still in force, but the basic provisions of the Common Agricultural Policy some 50 years on seem half forgotten and ignored. Its objectives include ensuring "a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture". In working out and applying the Cap, "account shall be taken of the particular nature of agricultural activity which results from the social structure of agriculture, and structural and natural disparities between the various agricultural regions". The tenor of the treaty is to help member countries maintain their agriculture, not close down whole branches of it.
President Jacques Chirac of France is a true champion of European agriculture. In a speech to farmers last October, he spoke of French ambitions for its agriculture, and his pride at France's having become the premier exporter of processed food. He sketched out a place for an economically strong and ecologically responsible agriculture over the next 20 years. He pledged to fight for a more equitable distribution of value added, at present captured by manufacturers and distributors closer to the consumer.
Ireland has many reasons to be closely allied to France, which exerted itself in the Agenda 2000 discussions concluded in Berlin in 1999, in the 2003 EU agreement on funding the Cap till 2013, and more recently in the rebuff to the incoming British presidency. Britain was throwing shapes for the umpteenth time at unravelling the Cap in order to protect the totem pole of Mrs Thatcher's EU contribution rebate, to which every member state, however poor or recently acceded, must contribute.
However, France and Ireland are not allies on sugar. Sugar beet, like milk, belongs to one of our most profitable lines of production. Unlike milk or beef, we produce only sufficient for our needs, with imports and exports roughly balancing out. Any small surplus sugar is fed to animals as winter fodder. It is particularly galling that surplus production of some of our partners is causing problems on world markets and has led the EU Commission to make drastic proposals that envisage closing down sugar production in Ireland and other smaller member states. Would any US administration, least of all the present one, move to close down, say, cotton production in Alabama, to meet complaints by its competitors upheld by the WTO?
The poorest African, Caribbean and Pacific sugar group countries are direct beneficiaries of the EU sugar regime with quota access at European prices, and have protested loudly that not merely their sugar industries, but in many cases their entire economies, would be devastated by the commission proposals.
Our position is rooted in the founding principles of the Cap. Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan, with the support of the IFA leadership, is determined to fight for the Irish sugar industry, negotiating with the support of a blocking minority at EU level.
With climate changes, soaring world oil prices, and the unpredictable course and consequences of conflicts and terrorism, it would be criminally irresponsible limply to accept the closure of our sugar industry. A few years ago, Mary O'Rourke successfully resisted an EU-inspired attempt to close our national airline. While adequate compensation is needed to enable restructuring and assist those who wish or need to get out of the industry, adoption of the compensation culture approach as the total national strategy would be abject surrender. To stay open, the Mallow sugar factory needs suppliers.
Arguably, Greencore was premature in making unilateral concession of the Carlow factory, an industrial pioneer of the newly-independent Ireland, thus forgoing any right to compensation on that account, without making Mallow less vulnerable to attack. More time would have allowed the establishment of the Milford rail depot near Carlow. Those who fought over 30 years to keep the Limerick-Rosslare railway line open will be glad that it will be even busier this autumn, carrying beet for the first time from north as well as south Wexford.
Throughout our history, there have ever and always been powerful external interests that wanted to close down competition from this country. If we let sugar fall, what branch of Irish agriculture will be next? Our horse-breeding industry, and the stallion tax-free exemption which supports it, are already in Brussels' sights.
The European Commission needs to take note that French farmers voted 80 per cent against the EU constitution. Farmers have long had to put up with a serious deterioration in their terms of trade and steady erosion of relative income and status, in the unspoken interests of other economic sectors. European farmers need to send a clear message through their governments that they will not be further sacrificed on the neo-liberal altar by never-ending income-shrinking reforms. Farmers deserve to be treated by society as more than the gatekeepers of the countryside. They are engaged in literally vital production activity, too much taken for granted.