Mr. Henry O'Donnell:

I am from Inishowen in Donegal and I am a national council member with the Irish Natura & Hill Farmers Association. The points raised by Senator Daly are very worthy of comment. I agree with much of what Mr. Renaghan put across. I do not think there is any conflict in what has been said. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Bord Bia and all the other bodies involved have no real ambition to promote organic farming. The last time, the scoring system put off a lot of farmers. I know farmers who applied and who farmed organically for almost a year only to be told they were not successful. When I talked to them about the new application, it was a case of once bitten, twice shy. They were not going to put themselves through the trauma of that again, albeit perhaps they would have got in this time. There is no ambition. Dairy farming is the sector that is most heavily weighted towards scoring. We need some ambition here. We have fabulous products in the shape of lamb that need to be actively promoted and we need bodies like Bord Bia to develop and create markets for what should be quite easily marketed. It is a fabulous product and people would purchase these organic products if they were educated on the benefits of them. I am totally against the scoring system because it shows no ambition whatsoever on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

I agree with everything Mr. Renaghan said about education and training. In addition to what he said, we need the knowledge-transfer mechanism, which I hope will come into effect in the next round of the CAP to do something specifically for organic farmers. I am an organic farmer in Inishowen in Donegal. At most, there are probably ten people within 30 miles of me who I know are organic farmers. We need a wee bit of a stimulus package to get us together into a formal workshop or knowledge-transfer situation so that we can co-operate and learn from each other. A lot of organic farmers I know feel very isolated. For the sake of expanding on the ideals of organic farming to our neighbours, it is critical that people get exposed to organic farming.

Another huge issue, which is the elephant in the room relating to farmers in the organic scheme, is the Irish stipulation of a minimum stocking rate of 0.5 livestock units per hectare. The reality is that can be quite difficult to attain on high nature value land, uplands and high carbon soils. I know the organic certification people say that if we do not reach it we get a lesser payment, but to properly incentivise organic we should not be made to reach this artificially high stocking rate. Natura land and hill land do not have the carrying capacity to reach 0.5 livestock units per hectare. It is effectively excluding a huge cohort of farmers who cannot even dream of entering the organic scheme who are almost organic anyway with very low fertiliser inputs and very low concentrate feed usage. These farmers are totally excluded. If we are to have any ambition, this is one thing that really needs to change quickly.

I agree with the Senator's comments on soil. The whole organic farming system is based on good soil management. We have lessons to teach all farmers about carbon sequestration, carbon storage in soils, water and filtration in soils from diverse types of cultivation. There is a lot that can be done if the will is there but at the moment it does not seem to be there.