Championing our farm families for 75 years

If I didn’t already know (and I did) that any organisation like ours is actually the sum of the efforts and the will of its members, then I most certainly do now, well into the second year of my term. The role played by every local, county and national officer is effectively no more than funnelling the wishes, ambitions, determination, and decisions of our thousands of family-farm members. It is almost a cliché now for organisations or movements to describe themselves as ‘grassroots’ and sometimes those most eager to describe themselves in this way are demonstrably nothing of the sort. 

But the ICMSA is almost literally a ‘grassroots’ organisation: the grass of Ireland’s pastures is where we were born, our cows are our pride. That was true the first day our forefathers came together to form this association and it’s no less true today. Most everything else has changed but that drive, that sense of purpose and place, that animated our founders 75 years ago must still be there in every decision we take and in every problem to which we seek and find a solution.

Seventy-five years is a long time. The actuaries will tell you that it’s an average lifespan of a man now, add or subtract a few years. The ICMSA and our members will celebrate our 75th this year, and we hope to publish an extended bumper edition of our newsletter this summer that will carry just a selection of the thousands of photos and mementos of our work and various campaigns over those 75 years. But while acknowledging our 75 years, there’s too much on our plate in terms of work to think about tipping it all off and replacing it with a nice slice of birthday cake. There are dozens of issues from farm incomes to nitrates to TB needing our attention and the ICMSA always has been, is now, and always will be a ‘tight ship’. We have a committed board, national council, area/county structures and staff whose focus is to tap into the expertise and energy of the membership.   If there is something just outside our areas of expertise, then, invariably, we’ll have someone, somewhere, in our county executives who will know perfectly how to get to the bottom of the problem.

That is one of the most enduring things I’ve taken on board: the range and depth of the expertise of our membership is extraordinary. And if an individual doesn’t know the answer or solution themselves – and that’ll be very rare – they know who will. We have a reach based on our tradition and longevity. We have a network that extends to every corner and parish of this State. Our friends know that and our critics – and they are mercifully few – have learned it to their surprise as well. 

Any group or association that has put down the time and the work that the ICMSA has put down is entitled to look at the present structure and members and say, truly, that present incumbents are ‘standing on the shoulders of true leaders’. It is actually humbling to take a minute and remember the people who went before us and who established the traditions for which our beloved association is still known: integrity, sincerity, problem-solving and unstinting effort on the part of the farm families of Ireland from whom we came and who we are proud to represent. We ‘do’ commitment. We ‘do’ energy and honesty in our own dealings with our counterparts throughout the Government and in the wider sector. We ‘do’ good faith and we bring both imagination and pragmatism to addressing the problems that beset the farm families whom we are honoured to represent.

We know who we are, and we know where we come from. We don’t consider ourselves any better, but neither are we any worse. And we will not be patronised or condescended to. That steadfastness and deep self-awareness has run through this association from that very first day in 1950 in Nenagh. It must never leave us or be forgotten by whoever come after us.

The ICMSA must go on, our members will decide the direction, and it’s up to all of us to get the next generation involved and convinced that this is not an ‘extra’ job or duty, but is rather an honour and asset. Ireland’s farm families have always needed a defender, a supporter, a champion for their interests. They founded the ICMSA for exactly those purposes and to fill exactly that role. The next generation of men and women must be convinced, in the same way we were, that – like their own farms – they must take it on and leave it a little bit better than they found it.