One-third of nitrogen used in 2024 was protected urea - Teagasc

Protected urea made up approximately 27% of total nitrogen fertilser use in 2024, director of Teagasc Frank O'Mara told the Signpost Conference in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, on Thursday 21 November.

Teagasc's Signpost programme was established in 2021 and currently has a network of 120 dairy and beef demonstration farms around the country.

"It has become a very well-established programme at this stage, a very well-known programme both nationally and indeed internationally," he said.

"I think it has been really pivotal in terms of getting the dial turned and reducing emissions from the agricultural sector.

"In the last two years, we have seen reductions in emissions - in the last year the reduction was 4.6% in agricultural emissions, that's against a target of of 25% reduction by 2030.

"And the indications from the EPA are that in 2024, this year, in the first quarter, emissions were down again by 2.2%."

Reductions

O'Mara said that these reductions are being driven by two things in particular, which include the judicious use of nitrogen fertiliser and switching to protected urea.

The use of nitrogen fertiliser has dropped over the last three years by about 30%. This, O'Mara described, is "rapid progress" on the road to 2030 targets.

"In terms of protected urea, the figures [show that] we are up to about 27% of straight nitrogen in this year. We're still a long way from having all our nitrogen as protected urea, but we are making very good strides.

"The Signpost farmers have been very instrumental in that - around 60% of the nitrogen on the Signpost farms is protected urea," he said.

Progress

All dairy farms within the programme converted fully to using low emissions slurry spreading (LESS) in 2023, while 89% of beef farms within the programme applied their slurry by LESS.