Farm Wars
The battle for the IFA presidency is complicated by the personel finances of one of the contenders and allegations of political bias. By Pat Brennan
During the next two weeks the 150,000 members of the Irish Farmers Association will vote into office a president - following a cammpaign that has been dominated by accusation, inuendo, and a fair amount of mud-slinging. The two candidates are outgoing president Donal Cashman and Ennistymon farmer Maurice Harvey.
Cashman supporters claim that Harvey is just a front man for former Deputy President Joe Rea (whom Cashman defeated in the last election), that he is politically biased, and that he hasn't a hope of being elected. Harvey supporters claim that the Cashhman presidency has been weak in a time of crisis, and that Cashman is so pre-occupied with coping with his own massive financial problems that his judgemen t is clouded.
The Harvey camp feels that all this controversy is good and stimulating for the IFA membership. Cashman, on the other hand, feels it is demoralising and damaging.
Like most allegations in political campaigns, these all contain at least some of the truth. Donal Cashman is, by his own admission heavily in debt. During the credit bonanza of the last few years, Cashman borrowed first to buy 200 acres on the side of a mounntain. He then borrowed to reclaim the land (a project which took three years to complete). He also borrowed to buy 50 acres of good, expensive land in the adjoining farm. Of his financial situaation he says, "I'm filthy rich in a minus direction."
Cashman is not more specific on his actual debt to the banks, but it is safe to assume that the 200 acres of mounntain land cost about £250;000; reclaamation another £200,000; the 50 acres of adjoining farm land at as much as £4000 per acre another £200,000. Depending upon the terms of borrowwing, the interest on £650,000 would be in the region of £100,000 per annum. Added to the financial strain of heavy borrowing, and heavy interest rates, Cashman had the added misfortune to lose 140 of his pedigree herd of 250 over six months in 1980 during an outtbreak of brucellosis on his farm. (He has since restocked but production is still down by 20 per cent).
According to Cashman, of. the 10,000 farmers reckoned to be in serious trouble from borrowing, 80 per cent did not buy land as he did, but just borrowed money to develop the farm according to plans laid out by the advisory services.
Maurice Harvey has sympathy with most of the farmers who over-borrowed. Most, he says, were building up their farms, buying in stock, reclaiming land. However, "there is little sympathy for the fellow who had 300 acres and bought 200 more. That was just an exercise in empire building. They're on weak ground to look for state aid for that ... they are in the minority, but unfortunately the present man (Cashman) comes into that category." Harvey feels that there is a tendency to believe that the IF A is a big farmer organisation and that this feeling has been heightened during the Cashman presidency because of the concentration on the issue of borrrowing and the lack of action on the issue of falling farm incomes.
Maurice Harvey is a relatively small farmer. His farm consists of "sixty acres on the map. Half of that is waste ground. Not reclaimable. 30 acres are in production and were handed to me by my father and grandfather." In 1978 Harvey bought a further 20 acres and reclaimed it. In 1979 "he bought another 21 acres and about one half of that has now been reclaimed. "We have been doing all the right things. We increased the herd, increased the yield, although not the income. Whattever improvements I have made I have made with no recourse to borrowing apart from overdraft facilities."
Maurice Harvey lives modestly, with his family and his parents in a small, simple farm house. After ten .years of marriage and five children, he and his wife are building their own home which they hope to move into in March. But, however genuine an "ordinary" farmer Maurice Harvey may be, his support is coming from some of the biggest farmers in the country, support which Harvey readily acknowledged to be more "anti-Donie than pro-me".
Two of the IF A branches that nominated Harvey were South Tippperary and Wexford. South Tipperary is the home base of Joe Rea, who serrved as Deputy President to Paddy Lane. Rea has been openly critical of Cashman's presidency: "Cashman and those who voted for him thought that if one remained quiet some great 'ministering angel' would arrive and hand out goodies. Life is not like that. The meek do not inherit the earth. The policies on which Cashman was elected were a failure ... and as a reesult of these policies farming is facing poverty on the lines of that of the thirties. It is very sad to witness such happenings and farmers haven't even fought a war on the issue. There hasn't even been a decent ambush."*
The Wexford farmers, disgruntled with the Cashman leadership, began to take things into their own hands. Wexxford is the county where farmers, big farmers, are in the greatest debt to the banks and ACC. Last year they formed the Family Farm Protection Group. Cashman met them in October and urged them to use the structures of the IF A to try to get their policies through. They wanted to start a campaign of withholding payment to the ACe. Cashhman agreed that if they got National Council backing, he'd go along with it. On October 20 the National Council agreed to a campaign of withholding payment. This scheme was not pubblicly announced, and the Wexford farrmers were getting increasingly restless. They decided on a picket on Novemmber 1. November 1 was a Monday. The IF A action committee (President and Honorary Officers) met the previous Friday. They decided to make the picket official. Harvey supporters claim that Cashman was forced into this position in order that it not apppear that he had lost control of the organisation. However, Cashman himmself cites the picket as an example of how active the organisation has been.
On the day of the picket, Deputy President Hugh Ryan and IF A organiisor Tom O'Loughlin arranged that other counties apart from Wexford attend the picket. Cashman was not there, and in answer to queries from the protesters, Ryan, reckoned by both sides to be an honest man, said that Cashman was at a COP A meeting. Cashman had, in fact, previously arranged to go away on holiday with his wife that week. His opponents were appalled by what they saw as a lack of leadership compounded by deception about the COPA meeting.
Cashman's side of the story was that he had arranged a holiday that week to coincide with a COP A meetting in Rome. He then decided that the meeting didn't require his presence but having arranged a holiday, he would go ahead with it. His elderly father had died the previous summer, his family hadn't seen much of him and they felt they needed a break.
Episodes like this one have caused a substantial level of distrust within the IFA. Incidentally, this particular episode of Cashman's absence on holiidays' during the ACC picket was aired in a debate on RTE's Day by Day. This has had further repercussions conncerning Cashman's willingness to coooperate with the media. The Landdmark programme had planned a faceeto-face debate between Harvey and Cashman. Following the radio debacle, the Landmark team was told that Cashman could not do an interview because of a policy decision of the honorary officers. Two of the honorrary officers were then contacted by Landmark and they knew nothing of the decision. Landmark was then told that the decision not to give interviews. was part of a code of conduct drawn up in the 1980 election (well before the Day by Day programme). Since then, Landmark has been informed that there will, indeed, be some kind of interview.
According to Donal Cashman, Maurice Harvey is a member of Fianna Fail and as such is politically biased. Harvey complains that Cash-
man's position as a director in the Central Bank represents a conflict of interests with his leadership of the IF A. Cashman answers that no less a man than Juan Greene, president of the NF A, was on the board of the Central Bank and no one accused .hirn of a conflict of interests. According to Harvey supporters Cashman, if not actually a member' of Fine Gael, firmmly put himself in the Fine Gael camp by saying that he would have voted for the budget. This is not a campaign for the tender or sensitive.
For the record, Maurice Harvey claims that he is not and has never been a member of Fianna Fail. Local IF A members who were also members of Fianna Fail asked him, he says, to help them formulate a farming policy for a meeting they had with their deputies. For these members, he put the farrmer's case to the local Fianna Fail Comhairle Ceanntair, and eventually formulated the resolution that came from Clare for the next Fianna Fail Ard Fheis. He was asked to come to the Ard Fheis and speak as an invited guest. He says he has declined.
Because of an inept statement on RTE before the government fell, about whether or not he would have voted for the budget had he been a TD ( to which he answered yes), Cashman is now being linked with Fine Gael. One agricultural correspondent has already encountered Ray McSharry's anger and Michael D' Arcy 's delight at this statement.
On the issue of the Central Bank directorship, Donal Cashman says that since the 1960s farmers have had a disstinct policy of ensuring that the farmming community was represented on as many boards as possible. Dr. Juan Greene was indeed a director of the Central Bank (although this was after his term of office as president of the NFA), and T.J. Maher was on the boards of the Sugar Company and B & I. Regarding his own position on the Central Bank (which has a policy against devaluation while the IF A policy is in favour of devaluation):
"Where there would be a straight conflict I said my priority would be the policies of the association. There will be no compromise on policy. I am there not as a delegate but I was selected as a farmer and president of the IF A to represent IF A policy not to muzzle it."
Donal Cashman, as the established figure in an organisation where presiidents normally serve two terms, has a better chance than Maurice Harvey. For Harvey to make an impact, the ordinary, smaller farmers, not usually all that active in IF A politics, will have to come out in very substantial number.