The IFA will not participate in a climate “charade” where the emissions science has evolved but the rules have not, IFA president Tim Cullinan insisted this week.

Cullinan referred to Prof Frank Mitloehner’s work on the short lifecycle of methane and its contribution to carbon emissions, outlined at the IFA conference in Dublin last week.

“It was clearly stated at that conference that we have to go back and re-look at how methane emissions are being counted.

“I think that needs to happen and I am asking Teagasc already that they need to go back and re-look at the science,” Cullinan told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Science

“It’s very easy to say we’ll get rid of all the suckler herd and now we’re not even sure that science is correct so I think there’s a huge job of work to be done around that.

“While Prof Fitzgerald [chair of the Government’s Climate Change Advisory Council] accepted the science on methane had evolved, he told us the accounting system is set and we’d still have to work to these targets until they are reviewed in 2030,” said Cullinan.

What we have here in Ireland is a massive carbon sink

“Well, I have news for Prof Fitzgerald and others – the IFA won’t be participating in that charade.

“If the science has evolved, then the rules must change, and they must change now.”

He said: “What we have here in Ireland is a massive carbon sink. Farmers are getting no allowance for the grass that is a massive carbon sink, the hedgerows and the trees – that is something that I’m going after immediately.”

The IFA will not sign up to a 2030 strategy that does not contain a clear measurable target for farmer viability

He said farmers were “sick of the hypocrisy from people who fly around on private jets telling everyone they are doing their bit for the planet by eating less meat or drinking less milk”.

Criticising the Food Wise 2025 strategy for including targets for exports, jobs and value but no target to measure how farmers were doing, Cullinan said: “I want to make it clear, here and now, the IFA will not sign up to a 2030 strategy that does not contain a clear measurable target for farmer viability.”

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