Routine farming seems to be the least affected of all occupations during this present extraordinary period. Crops are being planted, cows are being milked and meat factories are processing beef and lamb. Stud farms are also operating during what is the peak of the thoroughbred breeding season.

Many farmers I suspect find little change in their normal routine as deliveries of feed and fuel are continuing as normal and broadly, their output is being handled as normal.

But times like these demonstrate so clearly how the modern economy has moved away from farming and the processing of agricultural produce.

My grandmother died during the last great pandemic in the aftermath of the First World War. Those were the days before vaccines and antibiotics. The only means of avoiding the risk of infection was avoiding contact with an infected person – the original social isolation policy. As Ireland set about building an independent state, agriculture and the processing of agricultural output was all there was.

It is striking reading political histories of that period how there was unanimous agreement on the importance of increasing agricultural efficiency and output.

Today agriculture is again recognised as being essential and has been given an official latitude to operate, denied to other sectors.

The reasons of course are clear. Food has to be produced so that people can eat and even in a modern urban society, there is a recognition that animals have to be cared for.

But peoples’ and societies’ priorities have shifted. Once a society has enough food, other perceived needs take over – holidays and the tourism industry, cultural and sporting activities and the clutter that dominates so much of modern existence. A pause such as we are going through at the moment may be therapeutic for a while but modern society will not function on the basis of farming and a health industry.

The costs of the economic assistance measures put in place across the developed world are enormous and unaffordable beyond the very short term.

So far, the exit strategy in the absence of a vaccine has not been worked out. There are options being considered – none of them very palatable. This will be the next stage of the process and deserves more attention than it has yet received.

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