Leaving aside the serious challenges posed by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, the coming years will be crucial for Irish agriculture as major policy changes are coming down the line in Europe and Dublin that will shape the future of our industry.

In Brussels, the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has spelled out her ambition for the future direction of the EU with her Green Deal proposal. Von der Leyen wants the EU to be carbon-neutral by 2050 by introducing sweeping changes across member states in terms of energy, transport and agriculture.

It says much about current thinking in Brussels that its new Farm to Fork strategy for European agriculture is under the remit of the Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakidou and not under the direction of DG Agri.

Common Agricultural Policy

At the same time as Brussels is preparing its new Farm to Fork strategy, EU member states are struggling to find common cause on the direction of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The European Parliament has already kicked for touch on the issue of CAP reform by voting to delay any policy changes out to 2022. With the UK out of Europe, protecting the CAP budget has to be the priority for Ireland.

After this, some major commonsense reforms are badly needed in the CAP. Farming is often blamed for biodiversity loss in Europe. Yet, under the current CAP policy, if a farmer takes out part of their land to preserve it as an area of biodiversity or a natural habitat, they are penalised in a reduction of their basic payment.

Simple changes like this that actually reward farmers for the sustainability benefits they deliver will add up to huge gains across Europe. Yet, there are positives.

There is a huge knowledge gap in our understanding of carbon sequestration and significant investment in research on this side of the carbon cycle is badly needed in the coming years

Speaking at an event in Dublin earlier this year, the EU’s head of climate strategy Dr Artur Runge-Metzger said the EU could never achieve carbon neutrality without carbon offsets from agriculture.

Dr Metzger, who is one of Europe’s leading policymakers on climate change, said farmers needed to be rewarded for removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in soils, hedgerows and trees on their farms. This is the kind of thinking on policy we need in Europe, with the sustainability of the farmer given just as much credence as environmental or climate sustainability.

Quick-fix solution

In Ireland, the Green Party’s condition for entering government formation talks was a commitment to reduce emissions by 7% per annum. This has led to renewed calls for a reduction in our national herd as a quick-fix solution to reducing Ireland’s emissions profile.

Ideology aside, Ireland’s grass-based production system makes it one of the most sustainable places in the world from which to produce high-quality beef and dairy

Yet the enormous volume of C02 that Irish grasslands and farms actually sequester out of the atmosphere every year is consistently absent in this debate.

There is a huge knowledge gap in our understanding of carbon sequestration and significant investment in research on this side of the carbon cycle is badly needed in the coming years. Setting a fair emissions target for farmers is impossible without knowing the net figure for agricultural emissions.

Ideology aside, Ireland’s grass-based production system makes it one of the most sustainable places in the world from which to produce high-quality beef and dairy.

Reducing production here will only see that production shift to other parts of the world where the associated emissions will probably be higher.

Ireland has all the ingredients for sustainable food production.

All that’s missing are policies that back our farmers and put their economic sustainability on an equal footing with the environment or climate. That’s what true sustainability will look like.