Are farmers doing enough to be green?

Irish farmers “should be transitioning away from intensive to extensive, sustainable farming” according to Green party senator Pippa Hackett.

Speaking to Pat Kenny on his radio programme on Tuesday 14 January, she joined a panel of speakers including IFA president Joe Healy and environmental journalist John Gibbons.

They were gathered to discuss the topic 'are farmers doing enough to be green?'

Hackett said that the Green party aims to make organic farming easier to farmers who would like to transition away from intense farming, adding that “diversification is the key”.

Hackett’s party is in favour of introducing a carbon tax. However, she claims that the party’s model is different to that of the current proposal, where it will offer dividends where “hopefully, people will choose to spend it wisely” and they will also be sticking to the nitrates directive.

The senator was unable to give an answer to the question of water charges.

Emissions

Outgoing president of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) Joe Healy was keen to point out that since 1990, despite agricultural outputs increasing by 40%, emissions have increased by only 1%. “Maybe we’re just the low-hanging fruit,” he said.

He quoted figures from the European-commissioned joint research centre data that states that Irish dairy farmers are among the top most-efficient producers of dairy product in Europe and one of the top five most-efficient countries in producing beef.

His figures were refuted by Gibbons, who said that the data was 16 years old and that UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (UNFAO) was more up to date, claiming that grass is a net emitter of 6m tonnes of carbon per year and that our milk emissions intensity ranked 22 out of 24 countries in Europe, making Ireland the second-worst on the list.

The IFA president concluded the discussion by saying that what Irish farmers need to do is to avoid carbon leakage, while Senator Hackett called for the abolition of derogations.