Bioeconomy will be an integral part of next CAP - Heydon

The bioeconomy will and has to be an integral part of the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon has said.

While there will be no specific ring-fenced bioeconomy funding in the CAP budget, it has to be integrated into every farming sector, the Minister said at the launch of Bioeconomy Ireland Week 2025 in Tullamore on Monday.

“There is an awful lot of economic opportunity in this that can sustain farmer’s incomes.

We need to support farmers and the food industry to identify those opportunities because it will help us with our climate targets as well as driving that economic activity.”

Diversifying

Identifying additional income sources for farmers from the activity that they already do will improve margins, the Minister said.

Farmers will always produce top-quality food in Ireland but “making that pay,” he said, can sometimes be a challenge.

“The value added piece, the innovation, that’s where the future is.

“All of these [farming] activities give us waste streams that are problems and we can turn these problems into really positive solutions,” he said.

“There’s a lot of money in the climate space to help farmers diversify, reduce waste streams, improve our impact on biodiversity, reduce our emissions and this is a really positive way of doing that.

“Farmers can’t go green if they’re in the red financially,” he added.

The bioeconomy is the part of the economy that uses renewable biological resources such as animals, plants, and organic waste to produce food, feed, bio-based products, energy and services, while also reducing waste.