Looking back over my time off from school during the Easter holiday, I have one distinct highlight.

I visited Kildalton College in Kilkenny with Tommy McGing and Padraig Doyle. We were fortunate enough to be invited by the director of Teagasc, Prof. Gerry Boyle, after we spoke to him earlier on this year at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition, where we presented our award winning senior group biological and ecological project, 'Which cattle breed has the lowest Carbon HOOFprint?'

Although reaching a great milestone at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition, our 'Carbon HOOFprint' journey is far from over. We are also national finalists in the 2014 Certified Irish Angus Beef schools competition; this has and will continue to guide us in understanding the Irish agricultural industry.

During our visit, we received an in-depth insight into the Teagasc sustainable farm initiative which is being developed at Kildalton College in alliance with Glanbia Ingredients Ireland.

After an extremely warm welcome from the college principal, Paul Hennessy, we were guided into an office where we could speak about our recent achievement and could compare our study to the sustainable farm programme. A tour of the entire grounds followed, guided by both the Kildalton beef and dairy directors. Each walk was extremely enjoyable and worthwhile to our on-going beef project.

Our study, which concluded that Irish Angus has a lower carbon footprint when compared to continental breeds such as Limousin, fits well with the sustainable farm initiative. The Kildalton Open Source study focuses on four key pillars with economic sustainability being highlighted throughout each: resource use efficiency which includes water, energy and nutrients; land management to enhance biodiversity; animal welfare and health and safety. These four headings prove extremely important for the future of agriculture in my opinion, especially with the topic of sustainability being so important to modern farming.

The first development by the programme is testing the application of a number of useful tools for farmers. The carbon navigator, (an online system which supports farmers and their advisors with reducing the carbon emissions of dairy and beef farms), was a key element to our success up at the RDS in January. The software is extremely simple to use and it allowed us to compare different farms to distinguish which were being more environmentally friendly and carbon efficient.

At the launch of the development last year, Minister Simon Coveney stated that the new sustainable farm programme ‘will ensure that our next generation of farmers are at the cutting edge of developing and utilising new and emerging practices to secure Ireland's leadership position in this area'. Our experience with Kildalton and the Irish Angus Producer group certainly helps us, as the 'next generation of farmers', agree with his point of view.