Ms Audrey O'Shea:

To reiterate what Mr. Kelly said, quite rigorous studies have been carried out on the carbon footprint per unit of product at farm level. It is coming out at the lowest across Europe with maybe the lowest globally with the exception of New Zealand. That number is 1 kg of carbon per 1 kg of milk. When we talk about the litre or kg of milk, we are talking about fat corrected milk produced so that we are talking about the same thing on a global scale. The only other country in Europe that can match that is Austria.

Mr. Kelly already alluded to the carbon navigator tool that has been developed by Teagasc. This is a tool that will be rolled out to all farmers participating in the scheme to allow them to see the changes they can make on the farm and their effect on their carbon input. There are five key measures that have been identified that can reduce the carbon number per unit produced on farms. They include extending the grazing season. For example, if one extends the grazing season by one more day out in pasture, it will reduce the carbon footprint by 0.17% per kg of milk produced.

I will provide an example from industry and other schemes happening elsewhere. FrieslandCampina has a scheme abroad where it is enticing its farmers to have their cows out on pasture 120 days per year for six hours per day. It happens naturally in Ireland every year for more than 200 days so we have a significant advantage straight away because of our unique selling point of grass-fed cows. The second thing that can reduce the carbon footprint is the economic breeding index, EBI. Many of our farmers are using the EBI in the breeding of their cows. Again, this can reduce the carbon footprint by 0.2% per kg of milk.