The Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group is to discuss the early finishing of cattle, an action which is set out under the Government’s Climate Action Plan 2021.

The plan includes an action to reduce the average age of slaughter of prime animals from 27 to 24 months by 2030.

A Department of Agriculture spokesperson said the Department continues “to have discussions with the industry, Teagasc, ICBF and the EPA about the role of earlier finishing of our prime beef cattle and the positive impact it would have on reducing emissions in the greenhouse gas inventory”.

Reducing the age of prime cattle at slaughter would lead to a 12.5% reduction in methane emissions from the herd.

Average

IFA livestock chair Brendan Golden told the Irish Farmers Journal that the 24-month slaughter age wouldn’t fit the industry as a whole and that an average of 24 months would work better.

“We would contend that 24 months is too tight to get the gains of the grass-based system for some of our better-bred stock.

“One size fits all won’t work and we’ve pointed that the calving season is now very concentrated,” he said.

He added that in spring, after two years, all stock would be at 24 months and it could result in a glut of cattle at one time.

Golden said that farmers know the challenge is there on cutting emissions and that farmers will do their bit, but warned that there has to be balance and that markets are built on a steady supply of cattle as they come fit.

It is understood the Food Vision Beef and Sheep group will next meet in early September.

Carbon farming

The Climate Action Plan also commits the Government to “explore the development of a carbon farming model”.

The Department has told the Irish Farmers Journal that it is “currently exploring how an enabling framework for carbon farming can be developed to best reward farmers for their carbon sequestration activities and although this work is at an early stage the potential rewards for farmers, and society in general, are clear”.

It added that the Department “will continue to reward both farmers and landowners for delivering environmental services through afforestation funding, in particular through the Agroforestry Scheme and also the Woodland Environmental Fund, to establish native woodlands on farms”.