Farmers will have to take part in more schemes similar to the existing BDGP, GLAS and Knowledge Transfer to measure their greenhouse gas emissions, adopt new technologies and cut the amounts of climate change-inducing gases released by each plant or animal they farm. However, overall emissions from the industry are expected to remain stable as production increases over the coming decades, according to the National Mitigation Plan published by the Government this Wednesday.

The long-term ambition for the sector is to move towards an approach to carbon neutrality which does not compromise capacity for sustainable food production

This document is Ireland’s strategy to tackle climate change, in application of international commitments such as the EU’s targets for 2020 and 2030 and the 2015 Paris global agreement.

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While electricity generation, buildings and transport must “decarbonise,” the aim for agriculture is different. “The long-term ambition for the sector is to move towards an approach to carbon neutrality which does not compromise capacity for sustainable food production,” the plan states.

Widening the use of better animal husbandry, breeding, fertiliser and slurry management techniques will be key in achieving this. The plan includes behavioural research into the psychology of farmers to find ways of making more of them embrace change.

Trailing shoe and protected urea

There is a mention of trailing shoe slurry spreading as an example of technology needing broader adoption, and future action is expected to switch fertiliser use to protected urea pending Teagasc research into the cost of the measure.

But while farmers continue to grow food production, their main contribution to the fight against climate change will fall outside of their traditional work, in two major areas:

  • Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: planting trees and improving the amount of carbon stored in soils could cancel out a large part of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Forests alone could offset 20% to 22% of these, with Ireland spending €3.2bn on afforestation schemes between 1990 and 2030. It remains to be confirmed how much of this will be allowed under EU rules, with the European Parliament voting recently to restrict this flexibility.
  • Replacing emissions in other sectors: the national mitigation plan sees Irish farmers supplying much of the biomass needed to move away from fossil fuels, whether from dedicated crops – as long as they don’t compete directly with food production – or from the increasing use of by-products such as straw, tallow or whey. Forestry is expected to play a role here as well, with wood offering an alternative to both fossil fuels and more carbon-intensive construction materials.

    • Overall, the plan is to increase new forestry planting from 7,140ha in 2017 to 8,290 each year from 2020, “with the majority of this expansion to be undertaken by farmers”.

    Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed is one of the four key ministers due to present the strategy at a special cabinet meeting this Wednesday along with his environment, housing and transport colleagues.

    An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar wrote in his introduction to the plan that “climate change is one of the biggest global challenges of this century”. With a cost analysis of many measures included in the document, the next budget will be the main test to see if this big-picture exercise translates into action.

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