FARMERS have been told to stop whingeing and think positively about their industry.

Outspoken economist Sean Rickard delivered his uncompromising message to last week's Arable Outlook conference at Scotch Corner.

He had even harsher comments for the politicians who draw up and implement the Common Agricultural policy.

For 30 years they had "dreamed up ever more expensive and complex methods" of encouraging farmers to produce less, he said. It was where quotas and set-aside had come from.

The latest reform was based on the idea that, if farming was more extensive and greener, production would fall and prices rise.

"It is cloud cuckoo land," he said, "If prices rise, farmers will increase production."

He also criticised the Government's push to persuade more farmers to go organic which, he said, still accounted for only 1.5pc of food production. "We produce more cat food than organic (food)," he said, adding that those who had gone over to organic had seen prices fall. "So it is clear the number of people prepared to pay through the nose for organic is pretty small."

Mr Rickard believed very few farmers were going down the less intensive route. There might be a slight reduction in the arable area, but no different from what had happened for the last 15 to 20 years.

"We have lost 1,000 farmers a year for the last 30 years or more and we will continue to lose them, but we do not lose that land," he said. Other farmers took it over, enlarging their own enterprise, spreading their costs and becoming more profitable.

Mr Rickard said the largest 20pc of farmers produced 80pc of the industry's production.

Care of the environment was down to the professionalism of farmers, he maintained. "We can have a competitive industry which is still environmentally-friendly and sustainable," he said.

Mr Rickard said farmers should stop talking about agriculture and start talking about farming in the food chain.

He believed farmer-controlled businesses were the way forward - not co-operatives and certainly not by trying to compete on their own.

The money was being made at the end of the food chain in what he termed the "product space" - the value, niche and mass markets - where farmers currently had little, if any, involvement.

The only way to capture more of that market was by working together to gain scale, spread costs, share knowledge and have the necessary physical resources. He stressed that they should do it by forming farmer controlled businesses and not co-operatives.

"Farmer co-operatives are run by farmers and that is why they don't work," he said. "My idea is for a farmer-controlled business which is owned by farmers but run by a team of professional people. They may not have anything to do with agriculture, but are very experienced in their field, but they do not come cheap."

Farmers might be very good at producing food but did not know enough about product space or marketing. That was why experts needed to be recruited, managers with entrepreneurial flair, marketing expertise and knowledge of the relevant part of the food chain.

He cited the example of a group of farmers who had formed a business to work with Warburtons the bakers. Warburtons discovered that, if they grew a certain wheat and marketed the bread in a certain way, they could get a better price and the supermarkets were happy to sell it.

"They could not do it with individual farmers; they needed a group to work together to achieve it," he said. "It needed a farmer-controlled business to provide the benefits of scale and management."

In conclusion Mr Rickard said production support was coming to an end.

"Support will decline markedly in the future as more countries join the EU," he said. "The single farm payment will come down probably quite markedly in the next ten years. There will be rural development payments but even they will come down eventually."

Now was the time for serious farmers to think about the nature of the business and see what changes they needed to make.

"Support should be focused on changing mindsets and helping farmers to establish farmer-controlled businesses for greater control in the supply chain," he said.