The western seaboard would be “cleansed of farmers” and rural communities decimated if the radical proposals included in the Unlocking Ireland’s Bioeconomy: A 2050 National Strategic Foresight report were acted on, the INHFA has claimed.

The controversial report has proposed that Ireland reduce the suckler herd by 600,000 cows, rewet 90% of drained peatland and heavy soils, and massively increase the level of forestry cover so that farming reaches climate neutrality by 2050.

However, the INHFA has warned that such an approach would have devastating societal and economic consequences for the country’s extensive farmers.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The Unlocking Ireland’s Bioeconomy: A 2050 National Strategic Foresight report, is one of the most damning reports aimed at the extensive farming sector ever,” said INHFA national chair Micheál McDonnell.

“The INHFA as a farming organisation is trying to promote generational renewal and land transfer, but this report flies totally against this idea,” the INHFA representative argued.

“The depopulation of the suckler sector, that is the lifeblood of rural communities along the western seaboard, would be a disaster for farmers and for the thousands of jobs suckler farming supports in our local marts and agri stores,” McDonnell pointed out.

The proposals included in the report, if enacted, would result in thousands of farmers being effectively “evicted” from commercial farming activity through rewetting, he maintained.

The western seaboard would be essentially “cleansed of farmers”, McDonnell argued.

“The actions outlined in this report would lead to school closures, promote rural depopulation and land abandonment – and associated wildfire escalation problems – and would also decimate our tourism industry that generates billions of euro for the west,” he warned.

Meanwhile, the ICSA said it was strongly opposed to the proposal to cut the suckler herd from around 750,000 cows to just 165,000.

Minor adjustment

“That is not a minor adjustment to the beef sector. It would mean the loss of the vast majority of Ireland’s suckler herd,” a spokesperson said.

“The idea that dairy beef can simply replace suckler beef is also too simplistic. These are different production systems,” the spokesperson added.

“Suckler farming allows farmers to produce beef from land that is not suitable for intensive dairy production,” the ICSA official explained.

ICSA also took issue with the scale of the rewetting proposals.

“Farmers who have spent a lifetime, and in many cases generations, improving and managing their land are going to be very reluctant to simply rewet it.”

The ICSA stressed that it was not against innovation and accepted the merits of developing the bioeconomy, but the association spokesperson insisted that suckler farming could not “be sacrificed to free up land for forestry, rewetting, protein crops and other uses”.