Professor Alex Evans:

I refer to the balance of inputs versus outputs. Conservation agriculture involves having fewer inputs and considering what the outputs might be as a result. The profit might be greater. There has been huge progress on this in the tillage sector, with practices such as not leaving soil bare, not ploughing it too deeply too many times, the use of cover crops, avoiding till sowing and so on. That all makes perfect sense and people can get their heads around that.

How do we apply conservation agriculture in Ireland in a grass-based system where we do not plough up all our farms? My colleagues in UCD have done some fascinating work on multi-species swards over the past number of years.This means not growing one variety of grass anymore, but rather growing up to 20 different varieties of plants for the animals to eat. They have research that shows the benefits of that, but I like to think the amount of plant above the ground is the same as the amount of plant below the ground. If there are multiple species, there are roots going to different depths and occupying different niches, which can thrive or survive drought or flood and can fix carbon at different levels. It is most interesting that the animals seem to do better on this kind of pasture, particularly when we look at their parasite loads. There are natural systems for controlling intestinal parasites. This is part of what our crop production colleagues call "integrated pest management", where one pest can be used against another, or one natural system against another system. That means, for example, less use of chemicals in an apple orchard. A little more fungus might be tolerated somewhere along the way, but there might also be a few more ladybirds, beetles and so on. This creates a different type of product which might be more marketable in the end.

If all that is wrapped up together, we are talking about the ecology of agriculture and biodiverse systems. People are getting back to thinking about agriculture as a system now, rather than just a process of feeding grass to cows and getting milk. It is much more complicated than that, and more researchers are now looking at agriculture as a system. In Ireland, we can do that very well. We have a good grasp of many elements, and many people around the world look to how we manage our system. There is much more work to be done on it for sure.