Letter from Brussels - February 2025

All they see and hear are people complaining that there are too many cows. But when we take a step back, it is farmers who are probably disproportionate in their analysis. Heightened awareness among all of us means that our ears prick up when we hear discussions which interest us.
For example, if you follow a football team, you tune in when they are mentioned but tune out for the rest of the time. Hence, you may feel that it is always your team that the pundits are giving out about having not heard the criticisms of the other teams.
In the social-media age, few professions get a free pass. I tell this to the farmers I meet who complain that they are unfairly targeted. And while there is plenty of evidence to show that social media and some mainstream media commentary on farming can be tiresome in terms of always using the farmer as the ‘poster-boy’ to highlight the climate crisis, it isn’t always the case. Aviation, transport, data centres and households are held up to scrutiny also. It’s just that the farmers’ ears don’t prick up when that discussion is happening.
I recently met a politician who took a lot of flak online following one of the elections in 2024. They told me that in real life, not once were they accosted or accused of the vehemence being meted out online. It was good anecdotal proof that the online world and the real world are parallel universes, and it is why farmers shouldn’t pay much heed to the noise online either.
Further proof of this came last month when the latest Eurobarometer survey was published. Eurobarometer has been going since 1974 and captures public opinion with comprehensive surveys on topics affecting EU citizens. Every few years it conducts a survey on attitudes towards agriculture. And the news from this survey of over 25,000 EU citizens, including Irish respondents, shows broad support for the role of farmers.
The EU wide headline is 92 per cent say that in the EU ‘agriculture and rural areas are important for our future’. Meanwhile 73 per cent of Irish respondents ‘agreed’ that ‘agriculture has already made a major contribution to fighting climate change’ compared to 62 per cent of total EU wide respondents. And three out of four Irish respondents believe that the ‘Common Agricultural Policy benefits all citizens and not just farmers’ while 82 per cent believe that the financial supports which farmers get from CAP is ‘too low’ or ‘about right’.
The results completely fly in the face of what farmers think is the public perception of what they do. Have a look for yourself. 

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/screen/home