Coulter urges more help for Farmers
Rev Dr Robert Coulter, the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member for North Antrim and UUP Stormont Commissioner, has warned that the constituency’s farming community needs urgent action from the Exectuive if it is not to face the same financial ruin that happened to Northern Ireland’s linen industry.
Assemblyman Dr Coulter added: “Whilst as a community, we greatly welcome the Executive budget proposals for spending more than five billion pounds on hospitals, schools and roads across the Province over the next three years as well as the challenge of creating 6,500 jobs, the Executive must ensure our at times hard-pressed farming community gets its fair share of the investment.
“Agriculture is one of the main industries in this predominantly rural constituency and our farming community was already strained to breaking point because of the Foot and Mouth crisis.
“North Antrim’s farming families provide a massive contribution to the social, economic and environmental life of the constituency.
“Those families have had to face the various economic millstones heaped on them by the European Union. They want to see urgent action in terms of cash aid, not pathetic words of sympathy or empty promises.
“The agricultural community forms not just a major part of the commercial backbone of North Antrim, but also of this entire Province. We must not allow the fight to save this important industry to become a party political or sectarian football. I would appeal to the entire North Antrim community to unite behind the constituency’s farmers.
“The livelihoods of many thousands of people in the farming industry are at risk right across the Province. However, it is not only those directly involved in farming who stand to lose if the Ulster agricultural industry goes under financially.
“The vast consumer market in Northern Ireland will also suffer. They represent the hundreds of thousands of people in the Province who buy farm produce, such as milk, beef, bacon, eggs, poultry products, and vegetables.
“Various sectors of the Province’s farming community have suffered drastically for more than a decade. The beef, poultry, pig and land-based farmers have all faced financial ruin in recent years. The time has come for a community-wide campaign to save our farming industry, whatever the sector. This united campaign must spread across every city, town, village and hamlet in our Province.
“The people of Northern Ireland can help considerably by ensuring when they buy their groceries from the shops and supermarkets, that they only purchase commodities produced by our local farmers. In this fight to save our local farming industry, each of us has a role to play. Let us all move forward together as a community and ensure that the Ulster farming industry survives well into the new millennium,” said Assemblyman Dr Coulter.