Inspiring Chairperson Imelda steps down from North Tipp IFA

Imelda gets a standing ovation from farmers

A significant chapter in the crucial role women can play in representing the interests of our farming community has been highlighted over the past eight years by Imelda Walsh who has stepped down from her role as Chairperson of the North Tipperary branch of the IFA after completing a highly successful four-year term.

Her departure was greeted by a standing ovation and sustained applause from the perdominantly male audience after she completed her final address to the branch agm in the Abbey Court Hotel in Nenagh on last Thursday night.

Ms Walsh, who is not of a farming background but who married a farmer, created a significant piece of history and shattered the glass ceiling in 2014 when she was elected the first woman ever to become Secretary of the male dominated branch.

Indeed, the Ballywilliam woman who for years has operated the family farm alongside her husband Tommy, played such a blinder in the role of Secretary over the course of the subsequent four years that she earned the respect and admiration of all farmers in North Tipperary who decided to promote her to the top job in 2018.

Again history was made: The branch elected its first ever ‘Chairwoman’. That title in the context of such traditionally male bastion doesn’t trip easily off the tongue, but Ms Walsh took to the task with passion and all the zeal she could muster - just like she had in her previous four years as Secretary.

As she stepped down at the agm, she invoked the words of former US President Barack Obama to sum up the philosophy she herself has lived in her eight years at the top working to protect the interests of her fellow farmers in North Tipperary.

“Change,” asserted Obama, “will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

And with those words Ms Walsh decided, despite a downbeat mood in farming at present, to sound a hugely positive note in her valedictory address by treating her audience to a cogent powerpoint presentation on the sheer scale of the agriculture and food sector in Tipperary and its massive contribution to the local and national economy.

NUMBERS IN FARMING

She pointed out that a total of 4,407 people were employed in Tipperary in the food and drink processing sector. Ms Walsh reminded her audience of how they were a powerful force and backbone of rural communities, by highlighting the fact that there are a total of 7,714 farm holdings in Tipperary, with an average farm size of 40.5 hectares.

She pointed out that a total of 9,924 people were employed at farm level in the county, which included a large dairy sector that has expanded steadily since the abolition of milk quotas in 2015, the imposition of which had stifled farm enterprise in Tipperary by placing a ceiling on the amount of milk farmers could produce over the previous three decades.

DAIRY HERDS

Outlining the sheer scale and importance of agriculture production in Tipperary, she said the county has a total dairy herd of 180,352.

There are an additional 53,232 animals that fall under the category of “other (beef) cows” in the county. The ewe number count in the sheep sector is 91,355. There are 12,370 sows in the pig sector and 12,282 birds in the poultry sector.

The total land area under tillage in the county is 23,549 hectares, while land under other crops such as fruit and horticulture comes to 4,300 hectares. Forestry covers 24,093 hectares.

DIRECT PAYMENTS

Ms Walsh pointed out that farmers in Tipperary received just over €86 per annum under the Basic Payment Scheme.

A total of €10.8 million is paid to farmers in the county under the Areas of Natural Constraints (ANC) Scheme, while €1.8 million is paid out under the Beef Data and Genomics Programme.

Farmers in Tipperary received just over €2 million under the Beef Environmental Efficiency Programme and other direct payments include €455,000 to sheep farmers under the Sheep Welfare scheme; organic farmers in the county receive €514,000, while payments under agri-environment schemes come to €7 million. Farmers involved in forestry in the county benefit from a total payment of €6.4 million.

Among the challenges for the sector going forward she alluded to include changes to the Common Agriculture Policy and meeting targets placed on the sector to reduce emission. Ms Walsh pointed to several advances being made to reduce the impact of emissions and runoffs in the areas such as slurry spreading, the use of protected urea and natural ways of boosting yields such as the use of clover swards. She said the use of solar panels on farms and creating alternative energy through anaerobic digestion were other effective ways of reducing energy on holdings and help farmers towards building carbon credits.

In stepping down from the Chair, Ms Walsh recalled her “baptism of fire” when she was first appointed Secretary of the branch in February 2014: The following day she found herself on the picket line with other farmers in a demonstration outside the local ABP beef processing plant in protest and low prices being paid by farmers by the factories.

She said the word ringing in her ears since she took office four years ago was Brexit and the challenges Britain’s opt out from the European Union posed, and continues to pose, for farmers and food producers.

Thanking her own family, and everyone she had worked with in her time as Chairwoman, Ms Walsh - or Imelda as she prefers to be called - said another highlight during her term as Chairwoman was “the teamwork” shown by farmers in Tipperary to ensure the election of branch member, Ballymackey’s Tim Cullinane, as National President of the IFA.

Like the rest of us, the low-light for her was the pandemic and all the challenges it posed. By contrast, Imelda herself cast a beam of positivity in her leadership roles and certainly put the needs of farm families in a spotlight not seen so intensely in North Tipperary for a good number of years.

But what now for Imelda is the question. Special guest at the agm, Anna May McHugh of the National Ploughing Championships, a true judge of character who has spent the past 70 years building the ploughing in to the major three-day event it is today told the audience: “I can see that woman in the Dáil yet.”

Who knows? No doubt the inspiration Imelda gains from Barack Obama’s words will surely drive her on to even greater things.

Meanwhile, the new Chairman of North Tipperary IFA is Templederry farmer, Baden Powell.