Young Castlerea farmer Owen Hester was just one of thousands of people to make the journey to Athlone last weekend for the Mercosur deal protest. “If this comes in, I don’t know what future I will have. If I can’t farm the land and make money off it, I don’t know what there is to keep me here. I don’t know if people fully appreciate the implications this is going to have?” he said. They are using angel dust and banned antibiotics, we don’t know what we are going to get here,” he said.

Source: The Herald January 18, 2026 17:28 UTC