The report was written jointly by the Institute of International European Affairs (IIEA) and the RDS and published on Thursday.

How to address the inefficiencies of the suckler herd, the potential of dairy-beef systems and the under utilisation of forestry in Ireland are all major themes in the “A Climate-Smart Pathway for Irish Agricultural Development” report. The report sets out a number of measures to reduce carbon emission with agriculture playing a large part.

Director general of the IIEA Tom Arnold told the Irish Farmers Journal the move from sucklers into dairy-beef could benefit many parties.

“Dairying is going to expand, we know that, but there’s going to be an output from the sector in terms of calves which are not going to be needed... These calves could be taken up in an increasing degree by the beef sector.

“There are other ideas on how we make the beef sector just more climate efficient. The levels of profitability in the suckler herd are very low; this may be an issue to begin to address those (climate change) issues,” Arnold said.

Arnold said that “incentives” might be needed to convince farmers to become aware of climate change concerns with responsibility, ultimately, lying with “policy markers”.

Suckler inefficiencies

Tom Kirley, chairman of the RDS committee on agricultural and rural affairs, said inefficiencies continue to plague the suckler herd. It is these inefficiencies which means suckler farmers should consider a switch in system, Kirkby argued.

“The suckler herd (has) developed artificially almost because of the lack of supply from the dairy herd (in the quota era), but there’s probably going to be a rebalancing there.

“We need to stand back and look at can the dairy herd contribute the right quality calf to the beef farmer that you won’t be as dependent on having the suckler cow walking around the place and only delivering a calf every other year,” Kirby told the Irish Farmers Journal.

The IIEA / RDS report has been compiled over the past 18 months with various industry stakeholders consulted. It was launched by Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed this week.

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Opinion: The challenges of climate change and agriculture, by

Tom Arnold and Tom Kirley