Dr. Oliver Moore:

The figures of 10% to 20% higher employment rates come from the OECD and are on page 8 in the EU biodiversity strategy. It is partly why the EU biodiversity strategy and the broader green deal seek to increase the organic acreage utilisable land area to 25% by 2030. Ireland will be lucky to get to its target of 7.5%, but I would like to see it getting to 7.5% rather than aim higher and not get there, frankly. The reason organic is better for employment is, in part, because it is more labour intensive. To put it straightforwardly, it tends to replace chemicals with hands. One has to do the work and sometimes literally do the weeding. For example, in east Galway there are two organic horticulture holdings that I know of and that are worth talking about now, Green Earth Organics and Beechlawn Organic Farm. Between them, they have approximately 100 acres of land and employ 50 people. That is 50 people employed; that is rural regeneration. How will the number of people employed in any other context in farming in Ireland reach such levels? It is just not going to happen. Horticulture in general takes up approximately 0.5% of the land area of Ireland and employs almost 5% of the people in farming, so horticulture is more labour intensive and that has good aspects to it. It has to be regulated properly. There should be social conditionality in the CAP because of that.

Organics employ more people because of the slightly higher labour element. Organics also tend to gravitate towards mixed farming in certain contexts. For example, sheep and cattle are often carried together to reduce the worm loads in sheep. Agroforestry suits organics. There is also growing one's own cereal crops for one's feed. All these things increase employment because there is more than one thing taking place on the farm, so there is more than one person feeding in advice, inputs, seeds and bacterial inoculations in the case of organic horticulture. It is more labour intensive, it is potentially mixed and can engage more with rural assets in the community. The creamery is not going to make money from selling fertiliser and pesticides, but we do not have a fertiliser industry in Ireland anyway. The ICI factory is gone. We do not have a car industry either so transport has a great deal of potential to reach climate targets without disrupting rural Ireland unduly. It is things like that. Where I live in Cloughjordan, there are 3 ha of a community-owned farm. There are 1.5 labour units employed on it. There are ten volunteers employed under a European scheme. There are two people employed to manage those 12 people and we are setting up a market in a couple of weeks to sell produce through a food hub, which employs people as well. There are over a dozen people employed on 3 hectares when one gets savvy about schemes and so forth. It is because of those types of things that organics employs more people generally.

As regards uptake, the uptake was very poor because the REAP scheme was better funded. For some reason, we ran a scheme that was organic-light and paid twice as much. Advisers just advised people to opt for that as it was easy and like the rural environment protection scheme, REPS, again. The problem with doing that is that when the economy bites again they will just drop it because there is no market and there is no evidence that one is getting money coming in for the money going out. That happened with REPS. There were 55,000 farmers, perhaps even 60,000 farmers, in the REPS. Then when the economy tightened it was seen as a cost and it was cut, at the bottom of a press release. That is not acceptable. With organic, one spends money in basic payments, but one brings in revenue as well on top, typically a premium. The uptake did not happen because other schemes were more attractive. That should not have happened. It should not have been that way. That is why I am suggesting that the organic payments need to be as high as, if not higher than, the other payments.

Organic is not included in the Teagasc MACC. It should be. The agriculture committee had Gillian Westbrook from the Irish Organic Association, IOA, before it last week and she spoke about that as well. In addition, organics is being discussed again at 3.30 p.m. in the agriculture committee. Both meetings have been given detailed presentations on organic agriculture.

I would recommend that the committee checks those out.

It is a useful marker that Ireland is efficient at producing dairy. Ireland is joint top in Europe with Austria in that regard. It is a relevant marker and must come into the equation. Any deviation from that needs to be assessed for impact. The general trend of the EU green deal is towards reducing these inputs where possible and increasing organic farming where possible. The trend makes sense because this Titanic is heading towards the iceberg and we need to steer it away. I earlier quoted the biodiversity figures. We have seen the climate figures. We have opportunities. Organic farming suits Ireland. We have the longest grazing season in western Europe so Ireland is already appropriate for organic. We can transition more quickly and easily than other countries that would have to struggle. It suits the traditional British and Irish breeds.