Mr. Patrick Lalor:

That is important. There can be different levels of CO2 emissions or measures to reduce them in different parts of the world. I have no doubt about the comparison between growing organic cereals in Ireland and growing conventional cereals in Ireland. My conventional neighbours, and this is no criticism of them as it is what they do, after sowing their crop of seed dressed with a chemical, will then go onto that crop eight or ten times, depending on the year and the pressure of disease, either spreading fertiliser or with sprays for fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, Roundup and so forth. I do not go into my crop at all. Think of the energy used by the tractor to do that and of the energy used in manufacturing those products, probably in Germany or elsewhere. They are brought over to Ireland and there is transport involved in that. I am not aware if that research has been carried out in Ireland. It really depends on what one is measuring when looking at carbon levels. Is one just measuring what happens on the farm or is one taking into account the inputs that are coming onto the farm and the amount of CO2 it costs to manufacture them?

There must be a holistic approach to that, looking at the CO2 involved in the inputs as well as what is being used on the farm.

The EU is currently asking conventional farmers to check their organic matter levels in the soil because it has become so depleted with the system of conventional farming. I do not want to get too technical but I will give a comparative figure. Some of them could be down to 2.5% of organic matter in the soil.

In my own situation, it is almost 7%. It takes years to bring organic matter in soil up. It comes from having a natural system of reapplying farmyard manure and not taking off huge amounts of crops. In addition, the use of sprays and fertilisers loads the pH of the soil, which is detrimental. It also damages the biology in the soil. Soil is a carbon sink and farmers, particularly organic ones, are using it as a carbon sink, and that is why our carbon soil levels are so high.

One year I had a 50% failure rate, but so did every other cereal farmer. That was the winter of 2010-11 which wiped out a lot of cereal crops, but it had nothing to do with organic farming. I do not know where that 40% failure figure for cereal crops came from. That would not be my experience at all.