Its time to Nationalise Ireland's land

[arcadeparade]

First off, I come from a farming family so I may be a bit biased.

A big reason that Irish land is so expensive is that roadside land was sold for housing plots. So farmers were selling a 1/4 acre piece of land for €50,000, in extreme cases.

What the government should have done was regulate the price of this land, to say the agricultural price plus a percentage, say 20% maximum.

The failure to do this led to a huge increase in price for first time home buyers, because they would prefer not to upset farmers than save people money. That would be far too progressive. The government messed up basically.

The same price regulation should be made for roads built through farmland. As far as I know, farmers are getting 23% of the National Development Plan money, compared to 10% for something similar in Denmark, the country with the best income equality in the world.

As far as subsidies are concerned, they will be gone by 2013, and food will be traded on world market prices.

Anectodally, I know that many farmers are against subsidies even though they received them, because they stifled growth on their farms, because of the quota system.

Because of this, it can get a bit tiresome to hear people give out about farmers making money off grants, because for example, farmers are receiving the same price for milk that they did 20 years ago, all because of the quota/subsidy system.

I still agree that farming should be reformed, but not all farmers make large profits, despite working extremely long hours. There are plenty of farmers who rent most their land, like my own father, and are in a tough situation precisely because of the high price of land, so someone like him would actually benefit from stronger regulation of land, if it was done properly.

As far as nationalising land, I think it could be good in theory like all acts of social justice, but it would be extremely difficult in a country where farms are so small and fractured on average. There are also questions of efficiency and compensation. And you would be stepping on a lot of peoples toes too, to say the least, although that's true of any revolutionary change. However those may be my own biases shining through.

[irish_bob]

We see that farmers now get two thirds of their income from hand outs paid for by the urban worker. So its clear that the current structure of farming is uneconomical and can only be sustained by putting a massive burden on urban workers. Farm collectivisation has a bad name, but, in reality, this is what the EU has being trying to do for a long time, i.e. to push out the small and middle sized farmer in favour of the large ranch. The only trouble with this system is that it puts incredible and unmerited wealth in the private hands of the rancher. Larry Goodman, for example, collects a single hand out every year of half a million euro - just for owning so much land. It makes much more sense to run these large farms/ranches as state farms, with workers doing a 40 hour shift, like any other worker. As I say, all Irish farms are massively subsidised already by the taxpayer. Even if the state farms were no more profitable, or even a good bit less profitable, it would still mean a massive saving for the population in general, as land for roads, schools, homes, hospitals, etc. would already be in state hands, so no addition fee would have to be paid. This would make an enormous change to the very structure of Irish society, as increases in productivity in the workforce would no longer be converted into higher land prices - as happened over the last ten years, and during all times of prosperity over the last several hundred years. Instead of increased productivity being swallowed up by land price inflation, it could instead be put into building up a native Irish industry that would lessen our junky like dependence on the multi-nationals. Its this retardation of Irish industry that is the real cost of leaving the land in the hands of about 1% of the population.

larry goodman actually gets that size of a single farm payment because he owned such a large number of cattle during the period 2000 - 2002 , he keeps most of his cattle indoors so thier is no correlation between present payment and land ownership in this instance

a small point i know but relevant none the less

i myself was born and raised on a farm and i regulary help out on the home farm

as to why agricultural land is so expensive in this country , while the property boom undoubtably drove up the average price of land , the reason for the high prices are cultural , thier is undoubtably a fascination with land within the irish psyche , most farmers would sell thier soul before they would sell part of thier farm , no matter how unprofitable it is , hence the reason such a tiny amount of land comes on the market each year in this country , even we were to get over our attachment to the soil in this country , it would be difficult to consolidate large holdings as thier are so few large blocks of good quality land , most farms are fragmented , divided by little by roads so baschically even you managed to consolidate 500 acres , handling such a disjointed platoform would be quite laborious and inneficent

i suspect what will happen in time( 50 years perhaps ) is most of conacht and the ulster counties will be farmed for forrestry and the larger farms of leinster and munster will be all that is farmed in a modern efficent and intensive way

[Eorna]

It's also time I married Kiera Knightly, won the rollover lottery and saw Spurs win the Champions League.

Pie, meet sky.

Would you ever feed her a couple of burgers, she would be stunning if she was a bit more fleshed out, to use a farming term, she needs to put up a bit of condition or a bad winter would carry her.

To Cael, what you are proposing is land clearance and forced urbanization of rural Ireland. Try it. Remember where the republican movement has always kept its big bunkers, they'll be dug up fairly lively.

There is no doubt that payments should be capped, but do you think that F.F. or the PD's types would ever come down on the likes of Lar Goodman.

[Twin Towers]

The high cost of farm land is a uniquely Irish phenomenon.

There are many reasons for it.

Why Irish land is so scarce in such a sparsely populated country is beyond me. I suspect it's because being a land owner in Ireland is so lucrative. Otherwise, there'd be plenty of land turning over in the system at reasonable prices. Just like in any other civilised country.

Basically, it's down to small-mindedness and greed.

Small-mindedness and greed is hardly a uniquely Irish phenomenon. The high price of agricultural land is down to the fact that relatively little of it comes on the market.

[Dios]

CAP and agricultural subsidies are war proofing. The same exist in the US or any first world country because there is no way you will ever compete on a level playing field with third world farmers, no matter what your methods. There are too many and they earn too little.

The main point of the subsidies is so your population isn't dependent on tinpot dictators for their daily bread, which is even more important now that places like the US have finally sold off the last of their national food stocks (happened last year).

I'm not saying the CAP is flawless, but it is essential.

[scratchnsniff]

This can only rely be achieved on an EU wide level. The EU should start a progressive system Of Banning or placing high tariffs upon Meat and dairy products from outside the EU that are not produced to the same high standards as EU produce. Starting with chicken and then pork it could work its way through the list, Banning Imports from countries with poor animal welfare, Hygiene,transport, Employee protection, etc.
The EU farmers may get a financial subsidy but those importers who are not bound by the same standards get an equivalent subsidy in reduced costs with no financial input from govt. (in fact they save in Bureaucratic costs)
Only when our farmers are competing on a level playing field should subsidy's Be cut or withdrawn.
These Tariffs could (and should) be justified by animal welfare concerns. I have never understood why we Insist that EU chickens should be protected whilst "foreign" ones can be imported, raised under conditions far more horrendous than ours ever were. Their bye putting our producers out of business meaning eventually a vast drop in the welfare of the chickens etc we produce. oh and sorry to go on but their is still a lot of room for improvement in our own intensive farms, improvement that cant be put through until imports are managed. Everyone wins!!

[Geckko]

Why not go the New Zealand route? Remove all subsidies and grants from the farming sector, and let them survive in the real world.

This (after considerable pain) led to massive consolidation of farms, and improved productivity and profitability.

Something that should be noted is that the ramifactions were not as severe as were feared. Many left the industry, but those who stayed prospered.

Ask them today and the industry would say they should have done it years earlier.

[Cael]

Off the top of my head, you might run into a problem with the little known Common Law concept of the right of ownership...

More seriously, the strength of the agricultural lobby in Europe is more to do with its contribution to output, employment and the social fabric of France and Germany, than it has to with Irish (or Greek, or Portuguese) farmers.

• Should CAP reform have moved at a faster pace? Almost certainly.
• Did CAP establish an over reliance on production subsidies and take farmers' eye off the real game (ie, demand-led production and innovation)? Unfortunately yes.

You are conflating productivity and salaries -- one of the key reasons we're in the current mess. Had productivity been increasing (at least) as fast as our collective payroll, then we'd still be a competitive economy. Perversely, the opposite of your argument is more accurate. Had wages and demand for plasterboard cubicles (houses) not soared to the unsustainable levels we now know they did, neither would land prices have became so grossly inflated.

Agricultural reforms are progressing -- with all the maneuverability of the Titanic. The decoupling of subsidies from (over)production has long since been implemented, as have programmes of farm retirement and modernisation. In the very near future, it's highly likely that what remains of farming will be entirely market-driven and the single farm payment will be "modulated" out of existence.

Nationalising sheds and grassland is neither here nor there.

And why did the price of plasterboard cubicles soar? Not because the cost of production of the cubicles soared, there was wage inflation but it was not the main factor, the main factor was soaring land price inflation, which could have been avoided if the land had been in public ownership to begin with. We see clearly that in Ireland, over a very long period, any increase in the aggregate supply curve, in consumption, investment and government spending is immediately converted into land price inflation - not into industrial development, as in less feudal societies.

[Geckko]

As far as subsidies are concerned, they will be gone by 2013, and food will be traded on world market prices.

Is that what the Irish farming community believe?

Subsidies may be going, but the persisitance of tariff and non-tariff barriers mean prices will continue to be significantly above world prices for many commodities.

[goosebump]

Unless people want to pay €10 for a Big Mac, which is what it would cost if farmers had to charge the real price of producing beef to wholesalers, subsidies stay.

EU citizens want cheap, safe and readily available food. If you were to rely entirely on the Market to produce that food, nobody would supply it, and most food we eat in the EU would be imported from areas over which we have no control vis a vis safety and quality.

CAP needs constant tweaking to react to changing market and environmental conditions, but its money well spent as far as I am concerned.

The idea that we should nationalise land belongs in Bananaland.

When Lenin/Stalin tried this in rural Russia, the farmers established their own unregulated black market in food produce (they had to to survive), and made no effort whatsoever to be productive while working for the State, which resulted in massive food shortages.

And what did the Authorities do to counter this?

Yes, you guessed it: they shot the farmers.