Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney defended the sustainability credentials of Ireland's agricultural sector at a session of the National Economic Dialogue in Dublin this week.

At the focus meeting on Regional and Rural Development, Coveney responded to worries expressed by Anja Murray of the NGO grouping Environmental Pillar. She said that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissons was "glazed over" in devising the Food Wise 2025 strategy and claims about the sustainability of our agriculture were not backed by science.

"What happens in agriculture will have the most significant effect on our climate emissions, more than any other sector," she added.

Speaking in front of representatives including IFA President Eddie Downey and Department of Agriculture Secretary General Aidan O'Driscoll, Murray said the cost of not reaching our emission reduction targets by 2030 would be "in the level of hundreds of millions, possibly billions”, unless changes in the structure of agriculture production and knowledge transfers addressed the issue. “This is potentially one of the greatest threats to the Irish economy in the next 20 years," she added.

In January 2014, the European Commission set an EU-wide binding target to bring greenhouse gas emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Measuring carbon footprint

Coveney responded by outlining the progress made in recent years to put climate change and sustainability to the forefront of discussions in agriculture.

“We are the only country with a programme like Bord Bia's Origin Green, which requires all participating farmers to measure their carbon footprint,” he said.

“Right now, all dairy farmers across the country and half of the beef farmers are recording their emissions through this programme. I cannot accept that Ireland is making claims of sustainability in the farming sector that it cannot back up.”

Coveney said the European Commission bills Ireland, New Zealand and Austria as best in the world for emission intensity for dairy and ranks Ireland third for beef.

“I do accept we need to do more, I'm not pretending we're perfect,” he added, "but all the big ideas in our €4 billion Rural Development Programme revolve around sustainability, such as GLAS, BDGP and Knowledge Transfer.”

The Minister added that an environmental impact assessment of Food Wise 2025, which targets 85% growth in agricultural exports, is currently under way. A public consultation will follow later this year.

“We will have a regular discussion in relation to Food Wise 2025 and that will involve environmental players as well as farming organisations,” he said.

Ongoing negotiations

Coveney acknowledged the potential consequences of missing the 2030 emission reduction targets, but added that he was negotiating with the European Commission at the moment to see if they could be made more realistic.

"We need to put agriculture under pressure to meet these targets and the only way we're going to do that is by creating a more realistic target," he said. "We are already struggling with meeting 2020 targets so this is a pressing issue for Ireland and the Commission."

However, the Minister said he could not accept that the best contribution Ireland can make towards a global climate problem is to reduce its herd size.

“We cannot allow somebody else to pick up that food supply opportunity when Commission figures show the rest of the world is producing dairy products at twice the emission intensity of Ireland,” he said.

While Irish agriculture as a whole emits more greenhouse gases than average because of the importance of livestock farming here, studies show emissions from the Irish livestock sector itself are much lower than comparable industries elsewhere.

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