‘Greenwashing’ and the challenge of achieving a net positive agriculture were the topics of the day at the 2022 Nuffield Ireland conference in Dublin on Friday.

On the panel chaired by consultant and 2003 scholar Geoff Dooley were dairy farmer and CEJA vice-president Thomas Duffy; dairy farmer and veterinarian Gillian O’Sullivan; associate professor agricultural ecology at UCD School of Agriculture Helen Sheridan; chief communications officer with the Global Dairy Platform Kevin Burkum; and farmer and environmentalist Ciaran Duggan from Kildare.

Friends of the Earth CEO Oisin Coughlan was unable to attend the Castleknock event at short notice.

Dooley opened the conversation challenging the panel with “greenwashing is a triggering word, are we green washing?” to which Ciaran Duggan responded “yes, yes we are”.

He believes that like every other industry, there is some level of greenwashing going on in agriculture and that there has been way too much talking and not enough action.

The conference heard that a key challenge facing the industry is rethinking and creating sustainable solutions to achieve this ‘net positive agriculture’.

According to former Macra president Thomas Duffy, there is a trade-off between producing sustainably while protecting food security.

He said: "Two days ago, the world population hit eight billion and it [population] is only going to continue to grow.”

Researchers' views

“Sustainability is unconventional, there is a whole lot of different dimensions to it and we need to be very careful about the policies and measures we put in place,” was the view of UCD researcher Dr Helen Sheridan.

Speaking from the US via zoom, Kevin Burkum agreed on the need to see "progress not perfection", a point which Helen Sheridan agreed on, saying that we could not wait for every sector to be in agreement and we needed to decide what areas we could move forward on.

Opinions from the floor

2022 Nuffield scholar David Dolan, who is currently studying the topic of ‘Net zero emissions farming’, agreed with the panel’s comments.

“I think anything to do with net zero, or aiming for net zero, is greenwashing, as it gives you permission to keep emitting the way you are, except you can offset your emissions somewhere else and that in itself is greenwashing,” he said.

A take-away message from former IFA deputy president Tim O’Leary following the panel discussion was “[the] need to pay more attention to what other people, besides farmers, are concerned about and see how we can address those concerns. When we are not doing that, we are allowing those views to take over.”

Speaking about the panel discussion, Nuffield Ireland chair Joe Leonard said: “Our aim for today was to move the debate away from the toxic antagonism too often seen in public discourse and the media and instead to try to find a common ground in order to make real impacts.

"Today’s robust discussion identified some strong suggestions for how we can collaborate with all political, social and scientific groups and leave aside our personal ideologies to develop real and lasting solutions so that agriculture can make real and lasting impacts.”

The 2021 Nuffield scholars presented their research findings, along with updates from the 2020 and 2022 cohorts.