I suspect the Department of Agriculture’s Food Wise 2025 day in Croke Park on Tuesday will go down in history. The date was fixed months ago to take a rain check on how the country was doing in its Food Wise strategy.

Essentially, this was the plan put together in 2015 to spell out where Ireland’s agri food sector should legitimately aim to be by 2025. Since it has been published, the world has changed. The Irish dairy sector has powered ahead driven by good markets – though volatile – and a Teagasc Moorepark developed production system that has demonstrated a capacity for economic and environmental resilience.

But side by side with that we now have the UK preparing to leave the EU and the realisation that agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gases is going to have to be addressed.

The production, markets and environmental elements were dealt with logically and coherently by the various speakers. I had never heard Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed deliver such a forceful speech, logically setting out why Ireland would not be deflected from meeting the expansion plans laid out in the Food Wise document.

He cited the environmental considerations that would be to the forefront as well as the economic importance of the programme.

Earlier in the day, Teagasc director Prof Gerry Boyle and chief Inspector of the Department of Agriculture Bill Callanan had set out the technical capacity of the sector to reduce the carbon footprint of the sector rather than allowing “unbridled expansion”.

But while absorbing all this as well as hearing Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan spelling out his proposals for the “evolution” for the CAP, there was an atmosphere of anticipation when we were told the Taoiseach would come to Croke Park as an agreement on the border issue appeared to have been reached; but, of course, then it all fell apart. Mr Varadkar couldn’t come and the border issue still existed. No doubt there will be a solution, but what shape it will take is still unclear despite the earlier positivity.

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