Dr. Rogier Schulte:

I am contributing on behalf of my colleague, Mr. Daire Ó hUallacháin, a research officer in the area of agri-ecology and I bring apologies from Dr. Rachel Creamer and Dr. Gary Lanigan, who, unfortunately, had prior engagements today. I thank the committee for inviting us to elaborate on our initial presentation last February.
I will begin with one slide from that presentation. We spoke about the emerging demands on land use going into the future, contrasting demands from an agronomic perspective as specified in the food harvest strategy and from an environmental perspective as specified in many different environmental policy frameworks. We were invited to elaborate on three subjects - the greenhouse gas policy framework, agri-ecology and soils.
Greenhouse gases have been prominent in public debate this week on foot of the publication of the IPCC report and when we talk about public debate, I start with what we call the Irish paradox when it comes to agriculture and greenhouses gases because we often hear two contrasting statements. On the one hand, we hear that agriculture in Ireland accounts for a large proportion, 32%, of national emissions while, on the other, we hear that agriculture has one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world. Both statements are true at the same time. A large proportion of emissions come from agriculture. The average in Europe is 10% whereas it is 32% in Ireland. Part of that can be explained by the fact that we do not have a large heavy industrial sector nor do we have a large population of cattle. This means that in Europe agriculture emissions are often masked by industrial and residential emissions but this is not the case in Ireland.
Second, we rely on ruminant farming in Ireland - cattle, dairy cows and sheep - which is largely a reflection of our soils and climate. It is simply what we are good at. The next slide contains data from the Commission which compare the carbon footprint of a litre of milk for every member state. The green circle is Ireland and shows that it has the lowest carbon footprint for milk in the EU. When we look at beef, we are again in a relatively good starting position. We have the joint fifth lowest carbon footprint. That is a good place to start. However, there is no room for complacency.
The next slide features screen grabs from the Internet of some of our main competitors. Each has proactive sustainability programmes both at national level and at processor level. For example, last week we were in FrieslandCampina in the Netherlands, Europe's largest dairy processor and it is making a serious effort to reduce the carbon footprint of its milk. In other words, we have to find ways to continue to reduce our footprint to maintain our position. Teagasc has a greenhouse gas working group where we pool together all the different expertise from our research centres and advisory services and over the past number of years we have produced three significant reports, two of which I have circulated. In 2012 we published our vision for 2020 and our research and development strategy. That report is in front of members. Last year we published our long-term vision for 2050 and that is the colourful report in front of members. If they prefer not to read long reports, we wrote a two page summary in our research magazine, TResearch, which we have also circulated.
I will focus on our 2020 vision. We produced a marginal abatement cost curve. This is a normal tool in the wider sense of the economy to assess what the options are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are one of the first in the world to use it for agriculture. The curve contains a number of bars, which represent options for agriculture. The width of each bar tells us how much impact each measure will have on reducing emissions whereas the vertical axis tells us how much it would cost. Bars that are below the axis pay for themselves and are cost beneficial whereas those above the axis cost money. Of all the options we assessed, we broke them into three groups, which we colour coded. The green measures relate to efficient farming, for example, an increased economic breeding index, higher genetic merit for cows, extending the grazing season and nitrogen efficiency. These measures, as we calculated them, turned out to be cost beneficial. The yellow measures relate to land use change and they are largely the production of biofuel and bioenergy. We see two things. First, they are cost neutral, which means there is no financial impediment or incentive for farmers to take them up. Second, under the current Kyoto accounting framework any carbon credits associated with biofuels and bioenergy are not credited to the agriculture sector. Instead, they end up in the power generation or transport sectors. The blue measures relate to technological intervention, for example, anaerobic digestion of pig slurry or slurry spreading equipment, and these turned out to be quite expensive.
The headline conclusion of our 2020 vision is that it is possible to achieve the food harvest strategy targets while, at the same time, keeping greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture constant. Part of that is good news because if that were to materialise, that would represent a decoupling of production from emissions meaning we could increase production while keeping emissions constant. That would mean a further reduction in our carbon footprint through efficiency alone. However, the other half of the story is this will not happen by itself overnight and I will come to that.
The theory is that increased efficiency will reduce carbon emissions but does this work in practice? This is where we look at the Teagasc national farm survey. This is a proper statistical survey, which has been operating for decades through which we collect economic indicators on more than 1,000 farms across the country on an annual basis. As of last year, for the first time, we are also collecting environmental indicators. I will highlight one graph from the report which shows the carbon footprints of the dairy farms in our survey. We split them into three groups - the one third of dairy farms that are most profitable, one third that have average profitability and the one third that are least profitable. The most profitable farms also have the lowest carbon footprint and vice versa.
The question is how will we make this happen. We teamed up with Bord Bia and we asked ourselves how we can maximise the adoption of these green measures. This is when we produced the carbon navigator, which is a decision support tool for farmers that helps them to identify which of the measures is most appropriate for their unique farm.

It uses very practical language. We do not talk about nitrous oxide emissions or methane but about grazing season length, nitrogen fertiliser rates, etc.

Third, we put a lot of emphasis on the distance to target rather than on the carbon footprint. I will elaborate on that distinction because it is important. The slides show two hypothetical farms, one in Wexford and one in Donegal. Each has a carbon footprint associated with its produce. There is a good chance that the carbon footprint of the farm in Donegal would be higher, simply reflecting the wetter soils, which result in greater nitrous oxide emissions. The lower productivity of the land also increases the carbon footprint. When we talk about individual farms, the carbon footprint is not the most important metric, however. This is because each farm has what we call the biophysically minimum footprint. There are and will always be some greenhouse gases associated with food production; that is the minimum footprint. The important question concerns the distance to target. How much has the farmer reduced his or her footprint towards the minimum? As in the example, it is entirely possible that a farmer in Donegal will have progressed more towards the target than a farmer in Wexford. Again, I emphasise that the example is hypothetical.

The carbon navigator, which is probably clearer in the slides shown to the members, is a very simple software tool. On the left of the slide, members will see the green measures, from our marginal abatement cost curve. The top example, on extending the grazing season, shows the farmer's current performance based on existing data in existing databases. The right-hand side shows that the farmer, together with his adviser, sets for next year a target, in days, for the extension of the grazing season. The farm is then benchmarked against the top performance within his or her county where the soil type is the same. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions arising from this change in practice is shown in the slides. Most important, the financial benefit that would accrue is shown. The carbon navigator will be rolled out in all the discussion groups on the beef and dairy side in Teagasc in 2014.

Our EPA colleagues have already referred to the fact that the United Nations and European Commission have agreed that after the expiry of Kyoto accounting mechanism that runs until 2020, a new one will be required. In this regard, I have to hand an extract from the European Commission's latest communication to the European Parliament. Basically, it is inviting member states to come up with ideas or suggestions specifically on how to treat agriculture differently in the future. We are working very closely with our colleagues in the EPA, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the National Economic and Social Council to produce a coherent Irish proposal.

We already mentioned soils in the context of greenhouse gas emissions. On the last occasion, I announced that we would finalise the Irish soil information system. I am very pleased to be able to announce today that we have done so. The members are the first to see this, and the viewer is evident on their screens. It will be operational on the Internet. This occurs on foot of a very large programme funded by the EPA and co-funded and operated by Teagasc. We completed the 1:250,000 soil map of Ireland and have put all the information, including the databases, into the public domain and onto the Internet. The study is based on an extensive field-sampling campaign using over 10,000 augur points and over 200 full soil-profile descriptions.

I will outline what the soil map can and cannot be used for. It is important to do so in today's context. Any 1:250,000 soil map will be based on associations. Associations are groupings of soil types that often occur together in a landscape. These soil types can be quite different. A slide shows glacial and brown soils that occur together in a group in a particular landscape. There can be two soil types in an association, or there can be three or more. What does this mean in terms of the use of the soil map? We are not able to drop a pin on the soil map and pinpoint soil types A or B because, as the animation available to members shows, we do not know which of the soil types we have actually hit with the pin. We can use the map to click on a polygon that tells us which soil types occur in the area in question. This means that when our advisers visit our client farmers, instead of bringing a list of 200 soil types, they will know they can expect to find one or more from a list of three or four. All the information in the databases will be available to them. Of course, the holy grail is to come up with soil-specific management strategies.

The soil map can also be used to regional and national levels, for example, in respect of river basin district management plans, the tier-3 Kyoto accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and habitats. This is a good moment to hand over to my colleague, Dr. Ó hUallacháin.