This article is from page 22 of the 2013-04-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 22 JPG
AS hundreds of Clare farmers look set to run out of fodder over the next two weeks, the ICMSA is blaming Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney (FG) for not seeking emergency funding from Europe when this crisis first emerged.
County ICMSA Chairman and O’Callaghan’s Mills Farmers, Martin McMahon, says that his organisation urged the Agriculture Minister to seek once-off emergency help more then a month ago, but they are yet to receive a reply from Minister Coveney.
“It is nearly impossible to source fodder at the moment. I was talking to a man last week who has around 100 cows and four bales of silage left. He has tried all his neighbours and nobody has any feed to give him,” he said.
“There are a lot of people really struggling at the moment. Some sort of a solidarity fund or a hardship funds need to be put in place for these farmers. We have asked the minister to go to Europe and look for this fund and he has not responded at any stage to say that he will do this. We had all of our MEP’s at a Clare ICMSA meeting about a month ago and they said that if the Minister looks for it, they will row in behind him and support it.
“The situation is much worse than it was a month ago when we first looked for this. This fund should be being paying out now – but they are still talking about it. There is a real shortage now on all farms.” Martin has also blamed the recent poor weather condition on the effects of Climate Change. “We have been struggling with the weather now since last May. Climate change is really playing havoc with farming. Last summer was so bad that some farmers in Clare didn’t even manage to get silage in. We all praying for an early spring and then we get this.”