Bygone Days: UFU to raise CAP worries with Secretary of State

“We are very concerned about some of the proposals from the EEC Commission: they would strike at the heart of the most important sectors of farming in the province,” warned UFU president Noel Bailie.

The union’s executive was to draw up a consensus of members views and was aiming for wide-ranging policy discussions with the UK farming unions to try and oppose the EEC plans and have them modified.

“We are deeply concerned about the suggestion now being brought forward to curtail expenditure in a manner which would clearly be differential in its application and would also seriously damage the interests of those sectors of agriculture which we in Northern Ireland had always considered as most suitable for Northern Ireland,” said Mr Bailie.

“There are few alternatives to grass based products in our climatic situation and the most consistently successful of these has been milk.

“It is in milk support that the most drastic proposals for weakening support levels are being made. “However we are also concerned about proposals on beef and sheep and we are worried about the effect on our intensive sectors particularly if further restrictions on importation of cereal substitutes are applied in an attempt to sustain cereal market prices,” he added.

The general secretary of the UFU Vernon Smyth emphasised that the trends to lower production in poultry, cereals and other products and the emphasis on dairy farming and sheep production, highlights the union’s fears for the province.

Already, the union had engaged in a battle over the sheepmeat regime, many parts of which it wants changed.

“We have a different regime here than on the mainland and there are some parts of it that are just not on, so we’ll be fighting hard on this one,” he promised.

One of the union’s main concerns is that under our regime, the total amount of money is divided by the number of sheep applied for.

This, the UFU believed, meant that a distorted picture of the province’s needs is presented and gives sheep producers much less money than they should get.

But the UFU was to be virtually “going it alone” for the other British unions didn’t see the same urgency or immediate necessity to act.

“We believe the time is right and we are going to act now,” said Mr Smyth decisively.

DISEASE ROW BREWING

A major row was brewing between the UFU and the Department of Agriculture because the Department will not start to eradicate Aujeszky’s disease from the province, reported Farming Life.

It reported: “Already, attempts to get the Irish Farmers’ Union and the Eire Government to join in an all-Ireland campaign to wipe out the disease once and for all have failed.

“Now the union says it is ‘deeply disappointed’ the department won’t act ‘probably because they don’t want to act alone’.

BUYERS PACK SUFFOLK SHOW

The Ballymena Livestock Mart, conducted their 24th Annual Show and Sale of Pedigree Suffolk rams, ram lambs, ewes and ewe lambs in The Mart, Fair Hill, Ballymena, on Thursday, August 25, 1983.

The catalogue comprised 183 lots and prior to the sale the exhibits were judged by Mr Donald McCrone, Cairnside Farm, Stranraer, Scotland.

At the sale there was a packed ringside of buyers and an early clearance with quality animals meeting an enthusistic demand.

Class awards and prices in guineas were as follows.

Pedigree Suffolk ram (any age): 1, Supreme champion, Northern Bank special prize and Suffolk Breeders’ Challenge Cup: The representatives of the late R W Hanna, Ballyportery Road, Knockahollett, 420; 2, Jim Hunter, Dickeystown Road, Glenarm, 200; 3, W H N Craig and Son, Magheramorne, Larne, 220; 4, S Mawhinney and Sons, Crookedstone, Crumlin, 200. Resesrve: Jim Hunter, 170. Rams not in prize list sold to 220 gns.