DEAR SIR: The extreme weather patterns that have affected Ireland so far this year back up what mainstream science has been telling us for many years – carbon and other greenhouse gases are changing the world’s climate. Climate change also has the capacity to create massive problems for future generations.

Many species of wildlife and plants that were once common to our grandparents have become scarce or even extinct.

I’m 68 and was born in rural Donegal. Back then, I heard the corncrakes in the fields on summer nights. How many Irish children have that privilege now?

Traditional crop growing has been squeezed out as modern farming methods have become highly specialised. Irish agricultural land has changed from having diverse, sustainable management practices to becoming more and more a monoculture for beef and milk production. Such monoculture is unsustainable in the long term and is damaging to our environment.

No, the Irish farming community are not bad people. But faced with the day-to-day reality of earning a living, the tendency is for many Irish farmers to try to forget the subtle changes that are happening all around them.

The grants system which contributes to most farmers’ incomes has been (and still is) skewed to encourage more monoculture, more global warming and more climate change. We are sleepwalking to disaster.

It is never too late to do something positive about the future. Individual farmers might feel helpless to effect change to switch our grants system to encouraging sustainable, diverse farming practices, but collectively farmers are a feared political force. Rural TDs will certainly pay attention if the IFA and other farm lobby groups demand change in the grants system. Politicians follow votes as sure as summer follows spring.

So I urge Irish farmers to think about the future and what problems they might be storing up for their children and grandchildren. Change happens when enough of us demand change. Please talk to your neighbours and lobby for changes to the grants system through your local representatives. In the long run, the earth rewards human wisdom, not human greed.