WITH THE PLOUGHING Championships taking place this week in Tullamore, Co Offaly, we’re going to hear a lot about farming and how farmers as the “backbone of the rural economy”. In my view, that portrayal is a disservice to them and the generations that went before them.

There is a tendency to view farmers as one big cohort, as if all farmers are all equal, when the reality is anything but. The variation among farms in size and income is massive. One size does not fit all.

Reducing all farmers to some skeletal component of a wider economy – rather than recognising them as the most essential element in producing food and potentially regenerating our natural environment – has devalued them in the supply chain; almost in the same way that food itself is now devalued.

Is this “backbone” expression in fact just a smokescreen, sucked up by so many, because the people making most of the money from agriculture are not in fact the farmers, but the agri-businesses?

(Well, unless you are a dairy farmer in a sector which sits head and shoulders above all others in terms of farm income. While 2025 has been an exceptionally good year for beef and sheep farmers, grain growers have not enjoyed such an upsurge in their commodity prices. A rising tide doesn’t always raise all boats.)

These businesses exist because of agricultural activity. They are propped up by farmers (helped with a good whack of taxpayers money) who buy their products and services – fertiliser, agrochemicals, fuel, seed, feed, machinery, animal health products, contractors, etc. This leaves little in the coffers for anything else.

Agribusiness is big business, yes. And we all need access to quality inputs and services to run our farms, but do we always require it, or need to use so much of it? Maybe it’s time farmers show more restraint when it comes to their input........

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