In Ireland the farmers are part of the national partnership process with the Government, employers and trade unions.  Like any trade union, the Irish Farmers association is there primarily to protect the interests of its members.  

As the Government/EU effectively determine a good deal of farmers income through the level of price subsidies or development grants, the Govt./EU is effectively their employer with whom they use their collective bargaining muscle to get what they can.  

Sometimes this can lead to common interests with other workers/trade unions on levels of taxation or social benefits etc. but more often than not their is little common linkage between industrial wage negotiations and the level of CAP subsidies.  

Certainly on the issue of globalisation farmers have been to the forefront in France and elsewhere.  But the often solitary and remote nature of their work doesn't make for easy organisation or linkages with other Unions.

There is also the crucial difference that farmers often own their "means of production" whereas as many industrial and salaried workers do not.  There are huge cultural differences between largely solitary workers and people who work in huge organisations which makes for very different perspectives between people who work for themselves, and people who work for others.

When allied to the traditional social conservatism of rural Ireland, this often means farmers support different political parties to the more militant urban based workers.  All of this is not to say, however, that they don't have certain objective interests in common - as workers, consumers, citizens and producers of essential goods and services.

Globalisation, Climate Change, world food shortages, and political regulation of markets changes the game for all of us, and it is perhaps time that both "sides" recognised this.

notes from no w here