A change of land use can provide a more prosperous future for farmers, according to associate professor in agri-sustainability and co-director on the Agricultural Science BSc programme at Atlantic Technological University (ATU) David Styles.

He was speaking at the 2025 ‘Finding Common Ground’ conference in the RDS last Wednesday where discussions focused on the opportunities for new land use change such as forestry, solar and anaerobic digestion (AD).

Styles maintained that the problem among the farming community in terms of diversification up to now has been a lack of planning.

“They’re always chasing the ball because they’re always too late. We need to game plan the future because we don’t have certainty but we can game plan what the future could look like and I think that will be really important for farmers.

Farmers are also managing land, not just delivering food,” he said.

Farmers, Styles added, are absolutely central to the bio-economy, to land management, to the delivery of ecosystem services and to food - they are a major part of the solution, he said.

Succession

However, unless farmers can talk about different futures openly, they can’t think carefully and honestly about the futures of their successors.

“I think the debate has been kind of somewhat suppressed because any talk about changing from business as usual, seems to be a challenge to the prosperity of farming, and it’s the opposite actually,” he said.

Support

However, Paul O’Brien south Leinster IFA chair said that funding mechanisms need to be in place to support farmers.

“I personally have a problem with the transition that’s being expected of us because I see the alternatives to what we do which is livestock production or crop production - I don’t see financial viability for anything else at the moment.

If I’m trying to entice my daughter into farming I need as a father to say to her that by the time you get to my age, you will be able to have a viable income.

“You need to entice people into an industry,” he said.