Mr. Paul Price:

It clearly has some effect. When fertiliser is spread, we get N2O and ammonia emissions and we do not get that if a farmer does multispecies swards. However, if the same amount of nitrogen is put through the ruminants, we would get the same amount of methane over a certain amount of production. That will lead to a certain amount of water pollution and ammonia, if not more, because the nitrogen would have been saved to go through there. This is what happened at the Teagasc Solohead farm and Mr. James Humphreys showed this in the Teagasc Signpost series. There was no reduction in water pollution and methane continues, especially in the A modelling, where it is linked to the amount of milk produced. If methane is the number one consideration and we just have multispecies swards without reducing the total amount of milk production, we will get the same amount of methane, which is a huge problem.