Dr. Oliver Moore:

I will answer the last one first. Europe has changed CAP in this and the previous rounds, not us. There has been a move over the past few rounds of CAP to move it away from a straight payment to paying for good things. There is a still a good opportunity for farmers to earn good money by doing good. I agree the move has been environmental, but it still allows farmers to get money, not out of direct payments, but out of eco-schemes, which are there to allow farmers to do something good and get paid for it. It is not something we have changed; it is something Europe has changed.

I will go back to a few other issues such as the science. I could have given the Senator a 20-minute dissertation on methane. It would not have helped this argument.

All of our material is based on science.

There are many possibilities within CAP that could help combat climate change, but many of them are future oriented. We may be able to reduce methane by using sunk carbon in the sea, but we do not know at the moment. Climate change is happening and we can only rely a certain amount on what might be possible to do. We need to act now and use approaches we know will reduce greenhouse gases. We should reduce the number of cattle and sheep in the country. I understand that this is a political argument more than anything else, so if that cannot be done politically, we must not increase the number. All the experts on methane, Ag Climatise and so on say that this is based on the premise of there being no increase in numbers. However, there seems to be a move to increase them. CAP should provide a mechanism whereby farmers can be supported in reducing their impacts. We are not demanding that numbers be reduced without some form of compensation; rather, we are saying that this CAP plan lacks any ability to support farmers.