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Young farmers and innovators will deliver on agriculture’s environmental obligations, says Macra president John Keane.
Speaking following the Food Vision 2030 ‘A World Leader in Sustainable Food Systems’ conference held in Dublin Castle on Thursday, he urged greater focus on achieving generational renewal in Irish farming.
He said that in order to deliver the ambition set out in Food Vision 2030, it is “clear that significant investment is needed in driving generational renewal with new measures needed to support this change”.
Future of sector
Keane highlighted comments made at the Food Vision event, where he said the two common themes were sustainability and generational renewal.
He said an Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for State Pippa Hackett outlined the importance of sustaining the farm sector into the future and pointed out that ‘Mission 2’ in the Food Vision 2030 strategy is to create ‘viable and resilient primary producers, with enhanced wellbeing’.
Referencing this, the Macra president said “young farmers in Ireland are jointly the most educated farmers across the EU, together with France, and we completely understand the need to sustain the sector in terms of the environment and also in terms of delivering on demographic change on farm”.
“Enhancing the wellbeing of farmers across the sectors will also be key to retaining and attracting new people into the sector. Studies published earlier this week by UCD found stark realities in relation to farmers' current wellbeing,” he said.
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