Last Thursday, the Irish State held a full day gathering in Dublin Castle on agriculture and climate change. Opened by An Taoiseach Micheál Martin and organised by the Department of Agriculture, it pulled the various strands together but it was very much an assessment of where we are rather than coming forward with radical new proposals for change.

In many ways, the Department, as the overall body in charge of delivering on Ireland’s climate targets, is the victim of scientific inertia at institutional level as well as being railroaded into accepting a 25% reduction in agricultural emissions by 2030 compared with the 10% target that has been set for New Zealand.

There is at least a widespread recognition that Ireland and New Zealand, as the most grass and bovine dependent economies, are the most exposed to forced methane reduction policies.

This impression of scientific inertia was reinforced by the Department of Agriculture’s chief inspector Bill Callanan when he realistically told the large turnout that there are reporting structures in place – for example the now contested method of measuring methane – but that they were not going to be changed for the foreseeable future.

There were two very distinct threads of approach.

There were the scientific assessments as to where we are in implementing the sector’s climate reduction targets and the prospects for further progress.

Most of this was delivered by the Teagasc specialists with the New Zealand work on the genetic variation in individual animals’ production of methane augmented by Donagh Berry’s work in Moorepark.

We will undoubtedly see methane production as one of the breeding objectives in the coming years.

The progress being made in the use of protected urea, low emission slurry spreading and cover crops for nitrate capture, are all contributing to real progress while feed and slurry additives are clearly in the pipeline to consolidate progress.

But outside of the analysis of scientific progress and possibilities, the sector’s leaders had differing viewpoints, to put it at its mildest.

Laura Burke of the EPA implied how she regretted the 56% increase in dairy production since the abolition of quotas in 2015.

I found Sean Molloy’s message as chief executive of Tirlán more palatable as he spoke of a steady increasing demand for dairy products and that we were well placed to meet it. However, he saw farm succession as a looming crisis with more people now exiting dairying rather than entering it and that given the inevitable growth in the demand for food, we should be encouraging more production, not curtailing it.

Marie Donnelly of the Climate Change Advisory Council called for more tillage but was short on proposals on how to achieve it.

Both the Taoiseach and Minister Martin Haydon stressed how much money and effort was going into climate research as well as TAMS grants for machinery etc.

While there may be no silver bullet and varying opinions on the validity of aspects of the science, the national effort is yielding results.

But it’s not surprising that farmers feel overwhelmed by the scale of new regulations and expectations being imposed on them.