A new €2m partnership for climate action and agriculture has been launched in a bid to support the agri-food sector in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue and Minister of State Martin Heydon announced the partnership on Wednesday 30 March.

The International Strategic Partnership (ISP) will be funded by the EU’s European Institute of Technology (EIT) and the European Commission, EIT Climate KIC is Europe’s leading innovation community working to support the delivery of a climate resilient economy and society.

EIT Climate KIC will partner with public and private stakeholders in the Irish agri-food sector, led by the Department of Agriculture, to combine their international expertise on climate innovation.

New approaches required

Minister McConalogue said that the new Climate Action Plan and the Food Vision 2030 Strategy have set a challenging agenda for the agri-food sector.

“Reducing emissions by 22-30% by 2030 and achieving climate neutrality by 2050 will require new and innovative approaches by everyone in the industry.

“I believe that this partnership with EIT Climate KIC has the potential to bring new, innovative thinking across the sector, whilst supporting our ambitions and setting the sector on an accelerated pathway of climate action,” the minister said.

Minister Heydon added: “I particularly welcome the ambition of the partnership to build a portfolio of actions, including trialling new practices and technologies, developing, and incentivising new business models and improving citizen engagement.”

The ministers highlighted that the strategic partnership would see EIT Climate-KIC apply their ‘Deep Demonstration’ model of innovation to the entire agri-food and bio-based value chain, from soil to farm to fork.

This will involve working with stakeholders from public, private, non-governmental and higher education sectors to develop a range of strategic and coordinated solutions on climate action that will be tested and demonstrated.

A key step will see the partnership identify opportunities to raise and deploy grant funding and private investment capital to support the innovation actions

The partnership will initially map the Irish agri-food system to understand and position the existing public and private sector partners and their initiatives.

Further steps will then create a framework to connect and integrate existing initiatives and actors, and to identify and introduce new innovation actions across business, the public sector, and communities. A key step will see the partnership identify opportunities to raise and deploy grant funding and private investment capital to support the innovation actions.

Minister McConalogue added: “The solutions developed and tested will assist our farmers, rural communities and the wider agri-food and bio-based sector to build resilient approaches and solutions to the challenges of climate change and environmental sustainability.”

He concluded by saying that new partnerships such as this will bring new thinking and novel approaches.