Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Organic Farming: Discussion

Ms Gillian Westbrook:

I echo what Ms Maher has just said about research. We do not have a final figure. We have done a European innovation partnership and done our own crop trials and things like that on heritage wheat. We publish all our information. We collate an awful lot of information across the EU to share with farmers and publish that in order that they can learn from it, but we do not really know about the costing side. We are talking to various parties about getting more involved. We see that an awful lot of research institutes are looking more towards researching organic here in Ireland because the funding will be made available through the Horizon funding stream. An awful lot more are coming on board and they are certainly needed. We can do an awful lot here. Interestingly, in some of our promotional videos and other things we did we promoted farmers growing heritage wheat and so on in the likes of the Monaghan and Cavan area. It is interesting that apparently people were told over many generations that they could not grow cereals there. Well, they can, they have done a really good job and it is a fantastic product. There is a massive amount of opportunity here to add value to output in some cases. The beef and lamb sector is a huge one for us, but there are also an awful lot of opportunities for cereal growers, be it for their own livestock or for the bakery and distillery industries. Research is greatly needed. I do not know if Mr. Meredith wanted to come in on that.

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