Mr. John Murphy:

Yes. Mr. Buckley has done several studies on it and he has published work on it showing food inflation over the previous two or three decades. Food inflation has been very modest. We have had a spike in food inflation in the previous three to four years for a variety of reasons but it is still very modest in the 20-year or 25-year average. We all know and even we ourselves and our families know people were spending less on their food as a portion of their income as the years progressed in the previous two or three decades.

In our opinion, food is not too expensive. We are not saying it is not expensive but we have to live in the same economy as everybody else. We are consumers and we have to go shopping and buy our food as well. We need to get a reasonable return from the market for our efforts. The traditional EU policy over the previous 30 years has shifted. We have shifted away from payments for production towards payments for a variety of other things like environmental factors, sustainability, extensification and organics.

That will have an impact, and the impact is probably being felt more in recent years because the real shift has only taken place in the last four or five years. Beef was mentioned a while ago. If you look at what has happened in Europe over the last 20 years, the beef and cattle herd in Europe has been ticking down by small percentages every year. It becomes cumulative and, suddenly, in other parts of the world, you get a big drought, like in Texas, and the livestock numbers fall, and we are where we are now. I do not think it is in anybody's interests to have this where we are now, because when you have these massive fluctuations, there will always be casualties and difficulties. We as farmers would like to see stable markets and reasonably stable prices over a period of time. Going back to sustainability and the issue of cost, we have issues like the Mercosur deal, where more stuff is coming in from countries that have less sustainability regulation, and we have to compete in that space. It is a balancing act to try to be fair to everybody.

There are some initiatives we are using at farm level that are good for our businesses. Low-emission slurry spreading has been good for our businesses in the last four or five years. It has got more out of the nutrients we have in our tanks. We have succeeded in reducing the use of artificial fertiliser. We are converting to greater use of urea, using the inhibitors. That will have a big impact. In reality, if we want to reduce the methane kick, we have to embrace the additive technology. There was much talk, when we were listening in to the previous session, about livestock numbers and whether they should or will reduce. The reality is that it is difficult to ask people to reduce their output and take a cut in their living standards while they perceive everybody else in society moving on.