Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

No, it is not up and running, but the farmers are there. We went to another that had enough sunflower seed for the factory to operate for six months. What are they to do for the other six months? It is about looking at the broader picture. These are just some examples. The sixfold increase in rice yields is one thing but the miller gets four times the price from the next middle man that the farmer got. When one arrives with the rice still in its hulls, there is no weighing machine for the rice, so a guess is made, but lo and behold, when the miller is selling it on to the next middle man, there is a weighing scales. These are some of the issues we must focus on. We start off development with the rice farmer, and then we need to look at the next stage and the one after that and complete the circle.