Mr. Paul Price:

I thank the committees for the opportunity to provide evidence on the crucial subject of reducing Ireland’s agricultural emissions which will be essential in achieving Ireland’s first statutory carbon budget programme as set out in the 2021 climate Act. I am a research assistant in the faculty of engineering and computing at Dublin City University, DCU, researching climate science and low-carbon transition policy.

In my current research, I am funded as a carbon budgeting fellow through the Climate Change Advisory Council, CCAC, and have looked at agriculture, forestry and land use as they relate to Ireland’s climate action and sustainable development goal objectives. Previously, in climate change research projects funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and working with Professor Barry McMullin, I have looked at Ireland’s potential for negative emissions technologies and what is needed to achieve an effective economy-wide low-carbon transition aligned with our commitment to the Paris Agreement. I would like to make it clear that my opening statement and my responses today are mine alone and in no way do I speak for DCU or the CCAC.

It is important to recognise that greenhouse gas, GHG, and ammonia emissions are accounted by the EPA in standardised national inventory data reporting to the UN and the EU. Mitigation policies and measures, including technologies and other opportunities, are only useful if they can be verifiably accounted in the national inventory, which requires any new technology or emissions measurement update to pass EPA and international peer review, a process that can take years. Mitigation action is needed now.

Anthropogenic GHG emissions, mostly due to the activities of wealthy nations, have increased global average surface temperature to 1.2°C above the pre-industrial level, resulting in damaging climate change impacts that are most immediately affecting the world’s poorest. The most important GHG is carbon dioxide, primarily from fossil fuel burning. However, the small remaining global GHG budget to stay within the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C guardrail threshold for dangerous climate change is now being depleted very rapidly. Therefore, non-CO₂emissions, especially methane, and other GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and land use, must also be reduced as a matter of great urgency; otherwise the carbon budget for even rapid energy transition is unfeasibly small.

Reducing annual methane emissions is especially important because this can actually cut its warming impact to date, unlike carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide, which accumulate, increasing their warming impact even as emissions decrease. Research at DCU and University College Cork, UCC, indicates that meeting a fair share Irish GHG budget under Paris temperature goals requires a 50% reduction in methane emissions and a 50% reduction in nitrous oxide emissions, in addition to cutting CO₂to net zero before 2050. Some 93% of Irish emissions of both methane and nitrous oxide arise from agriculture, mostly from cattle through enteric fermentation and manure management. In per capitaterms, Ireland has the highest methane and nitrous oxide emissions in the EU.

This hearing is focused on opportunities to meet the requirement to reduce GHG and ammonia emissions in Ireland’s agriculture sector. It is, therefore, crucial to understand which previous combinations of policies and measures have reduced emissions and which have failed to do so. The recent past gives us a good guide. Agricultural sector GHG emissions peaked in 1998, then fell steadily to 2011, but since 2010 emissions have risen rapidly. Ongoing EU agricultural policies were in place for the period of falling emissions up to 2011, particularly the milk quota limit on total national dairy production. Based on EPA inventory data, the GHG and nitrogen-use efficiency of milk and beef production improved up to 2005 but has not improved significantly since then. Therefore, within Ireland's grass-based system, any increase in milk or beef production now results in more emissions. As soon as the milk quota started to be released from 2010 onwards, and especially from 2013 onwards, milk production increased rapidly and dairy methane emissions have increased just as quickly, as has nitrogen excretion from dairy cows. We know that a quota on production is an effective way to limit inventory emissions. We also now know that in Ireland removing the milk quota on dairy production has been an effective way to increaseemissions.

Has this emissions production linkage and quota effectiveness been well understood by experts? Literature review indicates that experts understand this very well. Teagasc noted that declining GHG and ammonia emissions since 2000 had been falling since then due to declining ruminant livestock numbers and fertiliser use. Specifically, looking at the large potential incoherence between Food Harvest 2020 and climate action, in modelling of dairy and suckler cow numbers in 2012, correctly projected that "achievement of the Food Harvest output targets would make the achievement of any reduction in emissions of GHG from Irish agriculture more difficult".

A second question arises. Compared to the milk quota period up to 2010, have any of the measures proposed or implemented since 2010 been as effective, or even somewhat effective, in curtailing sectoral emissions? The simple answer is that they have not. If anything,by targetingefficiency, measures have helped to increase emissions because there has been no effective limit on animal agriculture production or nitrogen usage. Efficiency measures can result in cost savings that can then be reinvested in more production, thereby increasing total national emissions. That is what has happened.

Modelling has consistently shown that a large decrease in beef cattle production would be required to compensate for emissions growth due to increase milk production from higher emitting dairy cows. However, no policy to ensure achievement of such a compensating reduction without fail has been seriously considered for implementation. Concerningly, recent media reports indicate that dairy cow numbers are anticipated to rise still further to reach 1.8 million by 2025, exceeding Teagasc roadmap projections and requiring more fertiliser and feed inputs.

My research, based on collated data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, and GWP analysis, shows that the methane warming impact of Ireland’s cattle and sheep has risen linearly since 1961, at first due to beef and sheep emissions rising up to 2010 and then with much increased dairy production since 2010. No other EU member state has maintained such a rapid increase in dairy cow numbers since 2010 in the way Ireland has done. As we have seen in repeated fodder crises and now with the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ireland's agricultural policy has resulted in a sector that lacks resilience and is highly vulnerable to climate and external price shocks. By contrast, Denmark’s intensive agriculture model has higher animal protein exports than Ireland yet has less than half the methane emissions because, since 1985, Danish agriculture has decreased the ruminant fraction of its animal protein production to below 35%, because there are more pigs and poultry, and has decreased its grass-feeding of ruminants to nearly zero, instead feeding animal indoors with domestically grown grain and protein cropping. I am not endorsing the Danish form of agricultural intensification but the comparison does indicate that by focusing on – and recently further intensifying – its grass-based and ruminant-dominated system, Ireland has chosen to persist with and further intensify a very high emissions form of agriculture that is heavily reliant on increased inputs of imported fertiliser and feed.

Nitrogen is the key element in the proteins essential for plant, animal and human growth but it is also a primary driver of damaging agricultural pollution by nitrous oxide, ammonia to air and nitrates to water. The critical importance of limiting nitrogen use is exhaustively addressed in the European nitrogen assessment, including clear messages in its summary for policymakers. Directing grass and feed inputs, increased by fertiliser use to ruminants, results in more carbohydrates being available for conversion to methane.

A milk or meat quota is effective in cutting emissions because it effectively limits nitrogen input usage so a more productive agrifood system responds to a quota with efficiency to produce the same amount from a reduced amount of nutrient input.

Since 1961, Ireland has increased nitrogen fertiliser use by a factor of 12, yet grass protein production has only doubled. UNFAO data shows that Ireland’s agrifood production system has a very low nitrogen use efficiency overall. The figure is 13%, the worst in Europe and far below the EU average, which was 34% in 2013. Ireland’s nitrogen use efficiency has reduced even further in the past decade due to the conversion from nitrogen-efficient tillage land to low nitrogen-efficient dairy production, which is far more polluting.

The opportunity to cut agricultural emissions and pollution in Ireland or the EU involves enforcing a policy limit on the total use of nitrogen fertiliser and feed inputs to animal agriculture and biology, via national nitrogen budgeting with subsidiary watershed level allocation to limit local pollution. Policy could further be aligned with the climate change science, which has repeatedly pointed out that dietary change toward reduced meat and milk production and consumption, particularly in developed countries, is now essential to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

In summary, urgent mitigation is needed, starting today. That means cutting emissions now, by limiting high-GHG activities. As we have seen over the past decade, promises of mitigation tomorrow may well not be delivered. We should be very cautious, therefore, about misplaced optimism that effective mitigation can be achieved via alternatives, such as carbon farming, fertiliser substitution, biomethane via anaerobic digestion or other technology options. There is the danger that the focus on technical measures may result in a delay that would distract us from regulating when regulation is required. We can recognise what works and what does not. To limit agricultural emissions and pollution, production quotas have been shown to work in Ireland. System-wide changes away from ruminants and the unbalanced, over-reliance on nitrogen fertiliser and feed imports can cut emissions, while improving the national nitrogen balance. Following international experts’ recommendations, we can adopt decision-making based on national and local nitrogen budgeting. I thank the committee for its attention.