Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Carbon Sequestration and Storage in Agriculture: Discussion

Photo of Joe FlahertyJoe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I come back again to the small farmer who rings me every week about his hedges and is very aggrieved that he does not seem to be getting any credit in the process for all the work that he has done on his hedgerows. He looks at neighbouring farmers who have taken out all their hedgerows. This is a question for Dr. Lanigan. Under REPS, we probably planted approximately 10,000 km of new hedgerows.

It is likely that we rejuvenated another 3,000 km of hedgerows. I am sure he was listening to the previous session when I referred to the work that was done by Dr. Kevin Black in 2014, when he suggested that a hedgerows assessment should have taken place. Even though farmers are not getting the credit for it at present, what is Dr. Lanigan's estimation of the value of those hedgerows as a carbon sink given that they comprise 4%, conservatively, of the national landscape?

Second, he said he was going to do his sums based on soil sampling. That suggests that he is probably ruling out using LiDAR technology to assess the value of hedgerows and then obviously the bigger picture of afforestation as well. Is he ruling out using LiDAR?

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.