Will climate fines shift bioeconomy proposals out of the aspirational?

The farm bodies haven’t been too impressed with the radical proposals on how Irish farming could achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

The 2050 outlook report on the bioeconomy certainly pulled no punches.

In suggesting that Ireland should cull 80% of the suckler herd – albeit over a 20-year timeframe – rewet 90% of drained peatlands and heavy soils, and massively ramp up forestry cover, the authors were pressing multiple buttons that were guaranteed to prompt an immediate and generally hostile response from the farm sector.

Those associated with the report will contend that they were charged with bringing forward a framework that could deliver a carbon-neutral result.

They will argue that the political fallout is not their responsibility, and it is for others to decide whether to act on the findings in part, or in full, or not at all.

Given its content, the report is hugely divisive both from a regional and a sectoral perspective.

There is a view in the west that the plan essentially consigns Connacht and Donegal to the role of providing environmental cover for intensive farmers in the south and east. In the process, the beef sector largely becomes a spin-out of dairying.

The report has been dismissed as aspirational by most of the farm organisations, but it has still provoked a fair bit of unease.

As one shrewd farm representative commented: “It’s easy dismiss the report now, but when we fail to hit our climate targets in 2030 and the massive fines start flowing from Brussels, will this report be dusted down and made into a plan at that stage?”

It’s a worrying observation.