Dr. James Moran:

In terms of what is going on in other European countries, as part of my job I am a board member of the Results Based Payment Network, an EU network that looks at these programmes across the EU. If you look at the rbpnetwork.euwebsite, you will see Irish case studies all over it but colleagues across other member states are also working on this. Outside of the European Union, some countries have taken even further leaps as they do not have the framework of CAP to deal with. Countries like Switzerland, for example, have been doing this for years and have taken a step further by linking the labelling of food to these systems as well. I hope in future we will use our ten-point scoring systems to differentiate food based on that as well. It would fit into our Origin Green programme and processors could take that straight away rather than having to build new systems. They could use the same scoring system and say, for example, that under the national agri-environment scheme or a local agri-environment scheme, 50% of their farms in an area have scores of X and above. It is a higher environmental product and they can market it thus. That is a possibility.

In the UK, the development of a post-Brexit agriculture policy is all about public payments for public goods. We are doing a lot of work at the moment with colleagues in England, Scotland and Wales. In particular, we are working closely with the Environmental Land Management, ELM, tests and trials in Dartmoor which are taking the scorecard work that has been done in Ireland and adapting it at local level and putting that system in place for the post-Brexit policy. We are in the lead on this at the moment but we are leading it locally as opposed to nationally. Other countries are going to pass us out in the next 12 to 24 months if we do not push on with this.

In terms of the apps and the maps, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in conjunction with Ordnance Survey Ireland, OSI, is producing a national land cover map of the country. It was supposed to be delivered in quarter 1 last year but is now expected to be delivered in quarter 1 of 2022. That will be an initial map with an accuracy assessment of all of these habitats throughout the whole country. That can be easily linked into an app which farmers can pull up and the map can be automatically digitised if it is linked in with the Department's computer systems. The basis of the land parcel identification system for the CAP payments is the OSI PRIME2 data set, the same basic maps used by the EPA. Now we are in a position, with mobile app technology, to merge the maps and data from the EPA, the OSI and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and to overlay them. This can give a lot of data on farms which will enable farmers to make informed decisions.

In terms of farmers taking ownership of the environmental agenda, as Dr. Dunford said, farmers have been told since they were knee high they must hand the farm on in better condition. What is better condition? We need to give a clear signal and agree together, as a society, what is better in terms of food production, environmental protection and meeting the needs of society as a whole. Farmers can very much take the lead in this debate and contribute to what is better in their particular context on their particular farmed landscape.

One mechanism for this to happen is the European Innovation Partnership scheme, under which partnerships between farmers, their local communities, advisers and researchers are set up. The partners are on an equal footing and all bring their knowledge to bear to find solutions to problems. That is our starting point. We respect each other's knowledge and we build trust on that basis. We work towards a common vision, recognising that, in any one piece of land, the farmer and farming family who have farmed it for generations know it better than anybody who can be parachuted in for a day or a couple of hours. We respect that, harness that knowledge and work together to build up from each individual farm, to local communities and on to national targets. That can be done if we put the framework in place to realise that vision.