Dr. Rogier Schulte:

Apologies, it is an exciting initiative. Kildalton, as the committee will be aware, is our largest college. We have chosen Kildalton as the preferred site of our sustainability demonstration initiative because it is where we are training the next generation of farmers. When we talk about 2020 or 2050, it is the students who are in Kildalton now on whom we will be relying to make all these discussions a reality. Also, the Kilkenny area, or the wider catchment area there, is where we see a lot of movement in terms of Food Harvest 2020 - many new entrants into dairy production. What we are doing there is bringing together all our research on sustainable farming from all our research centres - our dairy production centre, our beef research, our tillage, our rural economy and our soil centres - to showcase options for best practice in sustainable farming.

It is always difficult in our line of work to make that link, from proving options at research level in experiments to achieving it on the ground on a large number of farms. This will be the focal point where we will demonstrate different options for different farms. There is no one blueprint for sustainable farming. We will demonstrate options - going back to the paper - on how to maximise what we get from the land, in terms of food production, water quality and greenhouse gas emissions.

As to whether we can capitalise on that natural capital that we have there, it will involve a large KT programme bringing both farmers and food business on board. Where Bord Bia has its Origin Green programme, this will be a focal point where all the stateholders can come and see at first hand what sustainable farming looks like. That will be rolled out over a seven-year period.

The first year, this year, what we are doing is a baseline survey. If we want to show progress over time, we have to know the baseline information. This year we are simply measuring everything and as from next year, we will introduce, step by step, further measures to improve efficiency.