AFTER a Covid-induced absence of three years the Limerick and Clare milk producers dinner dance was back on the calendar last weekend.
As usual, the venue was the Dunraven Arms Hotel in Adare, County Limerick with Michael O’Connor, chairperson, welcoming a crowd of close to 100 – featuring a number of young attendees.
“Alas, we must reflect on a few empty seats from our last event in 2020. When we were last here who could have thought that our lives could have been so drastically impacted by Covid and the closures of churches, schools, marts, pubs etc but luckily most of us came through the other end of it,” said Mr O’Connor in his address.
Turning to farming, the Limerick farmer said milk prices – unless you were locked into forward price schemes – are at an “all-time high”.
“Then again, it seems to be high because for far too long we were stuck on a marginal enough price. If milk had slowly but gradually risen over the last number of years we should still be getting roughly the same price,” said Mr O’Connor.
The chairman also hit out at the “constant bad press farming is getting regarding climate change”.
“What should be remembered is that farmers are basically doing what generations of farmers have done before them but the problem is we have got too good at doing it. If the powers that be have their way we will see something that hasn’t happened for years and that is called hunger because how can you feed a growing world population with producing less food?
“The only time we didn’t get bad press was last spring for a few weeks when it seemed as if there would be a global scarcity of food because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine but as soon as the embargo was lifted we started to get bad press again,” said Mr O’Connor, who thanked the committee, Dunraven Arms Hotel and staff, and all their sponsors for making the night such a success.
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