Dr. Lilian O'Sullivan:

I will go back to the point I made earlier on thinking about the land in a more holistic way. There is very often a gap between what a farmer needs to achieve functionally on a farm versus what society expects the land to deliver. That is a very important point of intervention in terms of enabling environment, whether that is institutional fitting, in terms of schemes and so forth.

At this stage, in terms of the research we are probably looking at optimisation in terms of the biophysical intrinsic capacity of the soil to deliver not just production but at the same time looking at where we are at in respect of the synergies and trade-offs. If we recommend a practice, we must account also for whether there are trade-offs that can lend themselves to perverse outcomes. As Mr. Spink mentioned, we are probably behind on adaptation but it is within the line of sight and we must respond and plan ahead and model future scenarios and carry out analyses and outcomes in regard to them. That is an area that is being expanded within the programme of research we are doing.