‘Sometimes, if you want a job done, you have to do it yourself’

The Farmers’ Alliance says it now has 6,000 members. Bantry farmer Helen O’Sullivan is one of its leading figures and is running as a candidate in next year’s local election

A BANTRY farmer has reluctantly put herself forward as a candidate in next year’s local elections because otherwise she feels there’ll be nothing for the next generation to fight for.

And she has told local farmers – and those from non- rural backgrounds – that if they want to change the ‘misinformation’ that the farmer is entirely to blame for climate change, they’ll have to get on board and help.

Helen O’Sullivan, a beef and suckler farmer plans to run for the newly-launched Farmers’ Alliance party. It was set up in April by a Donegal farmer who felt there was ‘no representation out there for farmers, rural people, and the consumer.’

Helen, who has a HDip in sustainability in enterprise from UCC, has been farming at Droumsullivan, four miles from Bantry, all her life. She grew up on a dairy farm, that converted to sucklers in the mid-90s.

After school she got her green cert, and previously combined farming with work as an agri-sales rep with Cronin’s in Ballylickey.

She now farms full-time with her mother Mary. As well as running the home farm, she invested in a second farm at Cousane, and part-bought, part-inherited a third farm at Coomhola. Combined she has 85 animals (sucklers and dry cattle), and 200 acres.

Suffice to say, she’s already very busy, but she said it was a case of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

‘Sometimes if you want a job done, you have to do it yourself, but we will need help.’

She says she’s under no illusion that she’ll top the poll. ‘I know we’ll need a tough skin for this, and there’ll be plenty of knocks along the way, but we have to sow the seeds for change, otherwise we might as well turn off the lights in rural Ireland.’

Helen said she’s passionate about farming and has always got great pleasure from helping people with things like filling out forms, or whatever was required. She felt so strongly about the poor beef prices farmers were being paid in 2019 that she got involved in the Beef Plan Movement.

She was the spokesperson to represent the Cork branch of the Beef Plan Movement and she was also elected on to the national executive, the first female to hold such a position in any farming  organisation.

She was asked by locals to run as an independent candidate in the local elections that year, but declined. However, when she saw an advert for a meeting to launch the Farmers’ Alliance group in Athlone she attended, and addressed the gathering.

She said she was sick of the ‘misinformation’ being put out there that climate change and water quality is all down to the farmers. She said that no one was standing up for the sustainable work they do and that the government had no appetite to support them.

‘We’re painted as the big bad wolves and that has to change,’ she said.

When she was asked to put herself forward as a candidate, she gave it a lot of thought, and felt she had no other choice.

‘I had contacted some of the independent TDs before the launch to see if they would come together to form a rural party, but there were no takers. Putting myself forward is out of my comfort zone, but if we don’t do it now, there’ll be nothing for the next generation to fight for. 

‘If Europe gets its way on issues like rewetting, rewilding, and importing beef from Brazil we’ll all be put out of business,’ she said.

The alliance now has around 6,000 members, from both rural and urban backgrounds and they are interviewing more potential election candidates.

‘The fact is that we don’t feel represented by the existing farming organisations, nobody is standing up for us, and we don’t think the Minister for Agriculture is doing a good job for us, either. We wouldn’t be doing this if he was. 

‘He’s talking the talk but there’s a dictatorship in Europe and he’s just rolling out those plans,’ she said.

Agriculture will be the main focus of the alliance, including issues like water quality, food security, the Mercosur deal, rewetting and rewilding. But it will also deal with national issues like migration, and health and homelessness, she said. ‘The positive feedback, from rural and urban communities, has been overwhelming. Everyone seems to have some connection back to the land.’

Helen’s dad Leo passed away in 2004. ‘I think he’d be proud and delighted that someone is standing up for the sector,’ she said. ‘But I’m not doing this looking for any praise, I just want to be able to farm the land. I’m putting myself out there, but it’s going to be up to the people to get involved.’