Mr. John Spink:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present Teagasc’s views on climate change and land use. I apologise for the absence of my colleagues. They would like to have been here but were unable to attend owing to a clash with the policy debate on the agrifood strategy to 2030 in the Aviva Stadium.

Ireland can grow high yields of a wide range of crop species, including grass. The Teagasc sustainability report shows that mainly tillage farms have much lower CO2 equivalent emissions per hectare than livestock systems. Based on these types of reports, it is often suggested that ruminant-based agriculture should be reduced. While there is scope to increase tillage and horticultural crop production in Ireland, where profitable, these are not particularly land hungry systems and would not displace much land from grassland-based agriculture. It is also worth noting that Irish mineral soils are estimated to contain approximately 1,800 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which is roughly equal to 30 years of our total national CO2 emissions or 90 years of our agricultural emissions. A huge amount of carbon is stored in our soil. Cultivation of long-term permanent pasture can result in large emissions of CO2 from this stored carbon. It is not a simple matter of converting from pasture-based farming to crop production. Ongoing research is investigating the optimisation of land use for multiple agronomic and environmental benefits.

A large number of factors need to be considered when considering optimum land use. Not only the impact on greenhouse gas emissions, but the implications for biodiversity, water quality and economics, need to be considered. An example of these conflicts comes to the fore when considering forestry. Commercial conifer plantations offer the greatest economic return for the landowner and the highest levels of carbon sequestration, which is related to the growth rate of the trees, but greater biodiversity might be achieved by leaving the land in unimproved grassland or planting mixed native broadleaved forests.

As the chief inspector will outline, in addition to large-scale changes in land use, there is significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing farming systems through changing practices. These are identified in the Teagasc marginal abatement cost curve, MACC, which quantifies the potential scale of impact changing a given practice can have and the cost per unit of CO2 equivalent reduction. Two of the practices which can have a relatively quick impact at large scale and reasonable costs are increasing the amount of slurry applied using low emissions slurry spreading, which involves the use of a trailing shoe or hose, and increasing the proportion of nitrogen fertiliser applied as protected urea, which has the additional advantage of reducing ammonia emissions. These and the other measures included in the Teagasc MACC are being promoted by Teagasc advisers as part of a new climate change campaign and are being demonstrated in the new climate change demonstration farm initiative, which we are starting next year. The objective of this promotion is to achieve rapid uptake of these measures. In addition to this enhanced advisory activity, Teagasc has expanded its research programme relating to greenhouse gas emissions. Ongoing research is focused on identifying and validating new actions to reduce emissions or improve carbon sequestration such as reducing ruminant methane emissions, ensuring feedstocks meet sustainability standards for anaerobic digestion and increasing carbon sequestration in soils.