Dr. James Moran:

I will address the specifics of the feeding costs in the Burren. We conducted intensive work during the research phase of the programme. In the Burren once cows are being feed silage, they remain around the round feeder and they must get 100% of their feed from the silage. If I remember correctly, on average that costs €110 per animal over the winter time. A great deal of detailed scientific work went into looking at the forage quality of the winterage areas on the Burren and looking at the nutritional requirements of the animal. We developed a concentrate feed that only met approximately 25% of the animal's feed requirement but was a significant boost in terms of their protein and mineral levels and improving animal health. It took an animal only ten minutes to eat their 2.5 kg of feed ration at the concentrate feeder, but they felt very empty. The animals needed roughage and that incentivised them to go out on the free forage that was on the hill, which they were not grazing on before. We reduced the actual costs of feeding animals by moving to the concentrate feed. When we first started to use this particular concentrate feed ration it cost €225 per tonne. It was not cheap compared to other concentrate rations because of the high mineral content but it still reduced the cost of keeping a cow during the winter period from €110 to €40 per cow. That is a significant saving. It made sense from the viewpoint of agriculture, the environment as well as saving time. It took a farmer much more time to bring out a round bale of silage than to bring out a bag of nuts to throw in the feeder. I think the farmers thought I was a bit made when I told them that it was very important that they feed at the same time every morning every day. When the farmer feeds at the same time, the animals quickly learn and within a week they are there at 9 a.m. If an animal is missing, the farmer knows there is something wrong. It made herding much less time consuming and a job that once took a couple of hours now takes 30 minutes. That makes sense.

I will now deal with some of the wider national issues as well as issues in relation to the environmental groups As part of the Department's call for submissions for the rural development programme, which must be submitted to the Department by tomorrow, which is what I will be working on tonight and tomorrow, I am a member of the working group on the uplands, which comprises a long list of environmental groups, farmer organisations, and officials from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. We are drawing up a joint proposal for submission. All the environmental groups are on board. We are advocating in our submission is the application of this model to the other upland areas around the country. We hope that during the development of the rural development plan to flush out this in more detail so that we can show by case studies how it would actually work on the different areas. If one examines the submissions to the Department, in particular the upland working group submission, one will see the farm organisations, the environmental groups together proposing a similar model to what is currently working in the Burren. The farmers, the farm organisations such as the IFA and other organisations and the environmental groups see the potential benefit to the rest of the country. This is crucial to the reform of the common agricultural policy and the sustainability of the CAP budget in the future.

The common agricultural policy in the past ten to 15 years has evolved from food production to a multi-functional model of agriculture. The policy is not just about producing food, but producing high quality food in a high quality environment and yet mitigating against climate change and producing high quality water. At present the market pays for the food, to a certain extent. The market prices are not correct and something needs to be done in terms of addressing market failures, but the market totally fails and does not address the additional service that the farmer provides. This is where this programme steps in and creates the market for the environmental services that are produced by the farmer, delivering to the European taxpayer the multi-functional model of agriculture. This round of the multi-annual financial framework MFF was a very hard sell to try to convince the European taxpayer to maintain existing levels of funding to the Common Agricultural Policy. I do not think that will be maintained.

Members will see that 30% of the funding under Pillar 1 is being allocated to greening measures. The main reason that greening measures are put in place is actually to sell the CAP budget to the European taxpayer. The European taxpayer wants more and more of this type of product. In Ireland we are ideally placed to deliver it. We are also selling the management of these high nature value landscapes of Ireland. Our intensive agriculture is also dependent on good management of this. Bord Bia initiated an origin green campaign to sell our products internationally. We are selling them on the back of pictures of high nature value landscapes. In the case of intensive agricultural landscape that is producing high quantities of food, there are issue in regard to climate change and carbon and methane emissions. These areas are sequestering carbon, so I argue that if these areas are well managed to produce carbon sequestration potential, the other areas are producing high quality food but there is a trade off between the amount of emission from that. When we marry both together on the island of Ireland, one has a truly green sustainable agricultural product. When both types of areas working together, they balance each other out to produce sustainable agricultural product. In our vision of how CAP should be implement it Ireland, we are not pitching intensive agriculture against extensive agriculture.

European taxpayers want a range of products from our agricultural systems. The only way we can deliver this range of agricultural products because of the inherent trade-offs in any one field between the different products is to have both types of agriculture working together to maximise the products they are best suited to produce. This entails quality food and a quality environment mitigating against climate change, a truly sustainable food island.