Professor Peter Thorne:

I believe fundamentally in the ingenuity of the Irish people and the Irish farming community given the right conditions, opportunities and stability of policy at EU and national levels to diversify. Coming back to an earlier question, food shortages and food inflation this year will not just be down to the Ukraine conflict. That will be a large part of it but if you think about some of the extremes we have seen this year in the Indian subcontinent, China, Europe, North America and the major bread baskets of the world simultaneously, we can produce more of the food we eat, and I am not saying every farmer should grow broccoli - far from it - but we have opportunities to diversify putting in place the right policy and making the right market opportunities for the farming community to have a rich and diversified rural economy. That is what I want to see. It does not work through scientists saying it should happen. It works through the farming community, politicians and policymakers working together to make it happen. We have had major changes in agriculture over centuries. We have the ability to change how we produce our food but we should produce food.