Bord Bia has made some changes to its carbon footprint tool to take account of imported soya in rations used on Irish farms.

The move is a positive one. Speaking on a Teagasc Signpost webinar last week, titled “Do you know the carbon footprint of your farm?”, Eleanor Murphy of Bord Bia stated that wheat and barley in feed are considered Irish under the current process used to calculate the carbon footprint of beef and dairy farms.

In 2020, 1.3m tonnes of maize were imported into this country

Maize was not mentioned. This means the footprint tool does not differentiate between native and imported grain, apart from soya.

In 2020, 1.3m tonnes of maize were imported into this country, according to the CSO. Up to the end of August 2021, 695,721t were imported.

In 2020, 201,364t of wheat and 207,927t of barley were imported. Up to the end of August 2021, 95,639t of wheat and 112,636t of barley were imported. The majority of this grain is used in animal feed production.

Bord Bia stated that when the sustainability survey was launched, it had to be considerate of how much time it would take up and so the barley and wheat were assumed to be Irish.

Changes have been made to the audit to improve its accuracy, such as differentiating between fertilisers like urea and protected urea

Murphy said that Bord Bia would like to work with merchants to get a better sense of the feed mixes being sold to farmers.

Changes have been made to the audit to improve its accuracy, such as differentiating between fertilisers like urea and protected urea and entering improved animal data by linking with AIMS data from the ICBF.

The Farmer Feedback Report was launched in 2020 and this explains what is affecting a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions, so the farmer can work to reduce their carbon footprint.