Farmer Writes: food, but not as we know it

The drawing in of evenings means conference season kicks off in earnest. From now to the end of January, there will be options weekly for farmers to go and pick up different bits of information that will have an influence on their futures.

I’ve been at a few already between Teagasc events, discussion group and a forward-thinking event not far from home. Modern technology allowed me to sit in an old warehouse in Skibbereen and listen to a thought-provoking view from New Zealand on where agriculture is headed. KPMG’s global head of agriculture Ian Proudfoot was live via video link at the agriculture event segment of the National Digital Week.

He said farms will take a different physical shape to what we are used to. There will be vertical farms where plants are grown in office buildings in cities. Floating farms like the proposed Dutch dairy one will become more numerous. No doubt very different to the unfortunate cases of Irish floating farms we saw last winter and spring.

Printed 3D food will become a reality, as will lab-created meat. In 2013, the first lab-created burger was created at a cost of €250,000. This burger costs €12 to make now. Within five years cultured burgers could be available at affordable price to consumers. Meat producers take note.

Proudfoot had some positives from a beef perspective too. The Chinese demand for beef means they will take it as a source of protein before any others. That’s an opportunity for us, but then you realise China has a deal to take one million live cattle from Australia. That is half of the animals that are slaughtered for beef here and they have a much shorter boat trip.

Proudfoot was glowing in his praise of Origin Green, saying it was something all other food exporting countries are envious of.

It’s unfortunate that the two most forward-thinking initiatives in the world of agriculture, ICBF and Origin Green, are not viewed as favourably by our own farmers as they are by our competitors.

On a more practical farm level, ICSA general secretary Eddie Punch put out the idea of having a beef reduction scheme similar to the dairy one at another event in Skibbereen. It could be a runner and may well be required. After all, the Irish suckler herd is an artificial creation, rising in numbers on the back of the MacSharry reforms.

It may need an artificial means to bring it back down. It is going to shrink anyway due to the rise in dairy-bred stock and lack of successors and profitability at farm level. On top of that, maintaining a suckler herd as inefficient as the Irish one will be a hard sell when greenhouse gas emissions are factored in.

The next CAP reforms and the removal of the milk quota were big enough catalysts for change in rural Ireland, in particular the suckler herd. Throw Brexit into the mix never mind the French and German elections coming up in 2017, and Irish beef farmers could find themselves having little or no choice but to adapt.

CAP has succeeded in terms of preventing starvation in Europe. It has become a social and environmental policy designed to keep people in rural areas and keep those communities vibrant.

However, it has created a dependance on artificial supports, making farmers more vulnerable to outside risks such as the uncertain political climate that has developed in 2016.