Planting just over 102,000ha of forestry could have mitigated the additional greenhouse gas emissions associated with the expansion of the dairy herd, according to researcher at NUI Galway Professor Cathal O’Donoghue.

This lies within the afforestation rate that had been laid out by Government in Food Harvest 2020 and previous forestry policies. However, the afforestation target was never met over this period and plantings only exceeded 50% of the target in one year.

“If we had planted what we said we would plant, we would have had a carbon neutral dairy expansion. We would not be in the position we are now,” Prof O’Donoghue said.

Opportunity lost

“I guess it’s an opportunity lost. If we could have done it, we would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

O’Donoghue’s calculation was completed on the basis that there is an additional 386,000 livestock units (LU) in the country since 2010 and each hectare of forestry sequesters an average of 3.8 LU worth of emissions.

The finding was reported by the researcher in a document complied for the consultancy firm Auxilia Group, which takes account of 16 years of forestry research and economic modelling.

Forestry payment rates

One of the solutions to these low planting rates recommended in the report was the linking of forestry payment rates to the shadow price of carbon, which is the accounting tool used by Government to assess the environmental impact of policies.

No payments are currently indexed off carbon shadow prices, but it was €32/t in 2020, set to rise to €100/t by 2030. It will reach €265/t in 2050.

At current carbon prices, 50% of farms would boost income by planting forestry, if the payment rates were linked to carbon.

At €100/t, for 90% of dairy farmers there is a higher return from forestry, O’Donoghue said.

“If you factor in the cost of carbon, both sequestration and animal emissions, the return is higher across all sectors.

“At the moment, we don’t pay for it - we charge for it, but we don’t have a means of paying farmers who sequester carbon at the moment,” he commented.

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