Professor Alex Evans:

As we all know, the past eight or ten years have been very tough in Ireland but members also will be well aware that the agriculture and food industries have done very well during that time. I was talking to my colleagues last night and we were celebrating the last short while during which many very good people have entered the agricultural and food industries. We said this presents a challenge for us to try to keep up the momentum. While the Chairman pointed out that people are leaving agriculture, possibly by their thousands across Europe, many smart and ambitious young people have entered the agricultural industry in the last while. Perhaps that is a reflection of other parts of the economy rather than the agrifood sector. As a result, views on the agriculture and food sector have greatly changed in Ireland. Twenty years ago people were talking about it as being the sunset industry, where we would buy our food from elsewhere around the world, but now we cannot talk enough about fresh food and low food miles. If we can continue to build the good story that Ireland has with respect to its agriculture and production systems, that is part of it. The other part is that it will become a very knowledge-intensive industry. Education is an absolute requirement. UCD is only a part of the education system and we have many good people entering agriculture.

We often think about people just being farmers, the men and women at the front-end of food production, but a great number of people are involved in post-farm gate agricultural activities. We should not take our eyes off that. Employment for Irish people around the world in that area is growing. There is no simple fix. One could not say we need a new policy, new opportunity, new food product or a bio-based industry which would do it. It is the collection of all those parts.

Ensuring we have a viable rural community is a major challenge. It is not simply about merely having a good price for beef or, for example, ensuring farmers do not have flooding. It requires all the elements on which the members are focusing, which can be simply summarised as infrastructure. If it about roads, broadband, schools or the other services with which people are provided, if those are attractive and if there is a living to be made on the land, then I believe agriculture will do well in Ireland. It will not be easy but I believe we will always be engaged in agriculture. The past 50 years have showed us that increasingly fewer people are producing food for increasingly more people. I do not know how that will work if that trend continues or if Ireland can adopt a slightly different approach to trying to feed the world and producing massive volumes of commodity products by starting to produce high-quality products that people want for all sorts of different reasons. That is a long answer to a complicated question. It is complex.