Mr. Donal Sheehan:

I agree 100% with the Senator on that point. Equally, we must remember that we are importing large amounts of cereals. I use a large amount of cereals in dairy rations, and much of those cereals are coming from unsustainable sources in countries like Brazil. Yet there is no initiative for me to use grain from my neighbouring tillage farmers. That must happen. We are trying to start such an initiative in the BRIDE Project, where participating tillage farmers will be supplying dairy farmers who are also part of the project with native-grown cereals, instead of importing such feedstuffs from halfway across the world.

On the question of the payment, farmers were given a bad habit when we started paying for the environment. We had to do that because there was no other incentive to look after it. However, it has created a habit of perhaps not doing anything until we get paid.

As farmers, we have to start making changes, especially as that applies to low-hanging fruit. For instance, we can cut our hedges differently from the way we used to. We should not use as much pesticide on field margins. The soft approach we should take is to do as much as we can until it affects our income. After that, it becomes an issue and I would not expect any farmer to lose money by going green. However, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit where we can make changes. We need direction, guidance and advice.