Dr. Helen Sheridan:

I thank the Chairman and the members for this opportunity to make a presentation to the committee. Agriculture has probably never before faced so many potentially conflicting challenges at global and national scale. We need to increase food production while reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and maintaining and in some cases improving the status of our natural resources. I have tried to depict some of these challenges in the first slide.
From a national perspective, Food Harvest 2020 sets out a vision for smart and green growth in agricultural output in the case of the dairy sector, and value-added growth in the case of the beef and sheep sectors. In terms of the green dimension, the document states:

Ireland can become synonymous with the production of environmentally sustainable and welfare friendly products. This should result in consumers in key markets recognising implicitly that, by buying Irish, they are choosing to value and respect the natural environment.

Essentially, we need to achieve this to prove our green credentials. When we discuss meeting our production targets, we naturally look to areas in which we have a competitive advantage to help achieve this. I suggest that the exact same approach is required if we are to prove our green credentials. We need to identify areas in which we have a natural competitive advantage and focus our marketing campaigns on them, to some degree at least.
Obviously, we cannot measure all components of biodiversity. We have taken the approach of using semi-natural habitat cover as an indicator of wider biodiversity. We know we have major issues and challenges surrounding much of the approximately 13% of terrestrial land that has been designated as a Natura 2000 site. This has been reported to the EU Commission. We will have to work very hard to comply with the requirements of the habitats directive in this respect. I do not want to dwell on this today, however, as many of the species and habitats of concern will require detailed site and species conservation plans which will need to be developed and implemented on a case-by-case basis. I will focus on habitats that are not afforded protection under the habitats directive. These occur on farms throughout the country. While they might not be rare from a national or international perspective, their continued existence is fundamental to the provision of ecosystem services that underpin agricultural production systems.
Our research group has undertaken habitat surveys on approximately 170 grassland farms throughout the country to date. During this work over 6,000 ha of land were mapped in terms of their habitat composition. The results of this work revealed that, on average, approximately 14% of grassland farm area is under semi-natural habitat. As members can see from the next slide, this level of semi-natural habitat cover varies by region and farming system. However, the overall data show we have retained a good base of semi-natural habitat in our farmed landscape. This gives us a competitive advantage over some other European countries, such as the Netherlands, France and Poland. The Netherlands is estimated to have estimated to have 2.1% of farm area under semi-natural habitat cover. The figure in France varies between 2% and 12% depending on the region. The figure in Poland varies between 1% and 4%. As these countries have a greater proportion of arable land, a direct comparison is impossible.
The challenge for us is to create a link between biodiversity and Irish produce in the minds of consumers. Research we are undertaking along with our colleagues in Teagasc is focusing on the development of a user-friendly, non-specialist method of recording this diversity, such that a biodiversity index could be generated for farms. This type of approach has a role to play in terms of providing justification to EU taxpayers for the continuation of CAP payments. As the next slide illustrates, CAP expenditure as a proportion of the overall EU budget has decreased by approximately 30% over the last 25 years. It is likely that there will be pressure to continue this downward trend in the coming years. This is particularly relevant in an Irish context. Results from the national farm survey suggest direct payments comprise an average of 81% of total farm income, with beef and sheep farms operating at a loss in the absence of these payments. While the implications of greening have largely been limited to arable farms within this round of the CAP, it is quite conceivable that the requirement to retain ecological focus areas might be extended to grassland farms in the future. I must also caution against complacency, however. While the habitats are present at the moment, the ecological condition of some of them is dubious. For example, approximately 50% of the field margins and field boundaries surveyed were in poor ecological condition. Therefore, retention alone will not secure the long-term future of these habitats - the development of appropriate management regimes is also necessary.
The land sparing approach may seem like an attractive proposition as we seek to achieve the targets outlined in Food Harvest 2020. This approach involves certain areas of the country being maximally intensified while other areas, which might be less amenable to intensification due to soil type, etc., are used to make up for the loss in habitats and associated biodiversity. Ecosystem services take place at different scales. We know that organic matter breakdown, nutrient cycling, etc., are necessary at the field scale. Therefore, it follows that the biodiversity necessary to facilitate these processes must also be present at field scale. While a degree of intensification and expansion will inevitably take place, it will be necessary to manage this process so that both production and biodiversity objectives can be met. This is known as the land sharing approach. In some cases - the dairy sector, for example - a degree of land use intensification and associated habitat removal relative to other sectors has already taken place. The restoration of biodiversity may be important in these instances.
The next slide indicates that we have a good degree of knowledge about some techniques to restore at least some degree of biodiversity within these types of situations. I refer, for example, to the use of sown field margins. These techniques can be very effective because they take up a limited proportion of the farm area, and therefore have a minimal impact on productivity, while delivering on biodiversity. It is important to point out that this knowledge has been gained over a series of postgraduate studies undertaken as part of a long-term experiment that was initially established in 2002. I refer to this to make the point that research in agro-ecology is a slow process.

While results of experimental work are generated in a three or four year PhD, it is longer-term research which provides much more reliable information in terms of persistence of treatment effects. This is particularly important when we consider the development of measures for inclusion within agri-environment schemes.

I will now address the issue of resource use efficiency. Much of the grassland research which has been undertaken in the past 50 years or thereabouts has largely focused on varieties of a couple of species, with perennial ryegrass receiving by far the most attention. While perennial ryegrass varieties show many desirable agronomic traits, this is a highly nitrophilous species. Singular reliance on high input grass monocultures is becoming less economically viable and socially acceptable. The ability to produce high yields of good quality forage, at minimal cost to farmers and with minimal impact on natural resources, is fundamental to the sustainability of future growth in Irish grass-based farming systems. As the next slide shows, recent research has found that the production potential of multi-species grasslands, which may require comparatively lower levels of nutrient inputs, appears to have been greatly underestimated.

Our research groups is investigating the yields, quality of forage, biodiversity support value and ensiling value of multi-species versus monoculture swards through a Department funded project known as SmartGrass. I must stress that the results presented in this slide are extremely preliminary, as they are based on dry matter yields from the first harvest taken from plots in April this year. However, members will note that the multi-species sward yields are showing potential at this stage. We will continue to monitor the plots over the next three years to get a handle on how persistent this effect is. Dr. Murphy will continue the presentation.