Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Joint Meeting with Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action
Exploring Technologies and Opportunities to Reduce Emissions in the Agriculture Sector: Discussion

Mr. Desmond Savage:

As I said, we have to get the farmers to adopt these technologies. There will be natural resistance to that, so there is a change management element to this as well. In my experience of manufacturing, there is an 80-20 rule in that 80% of the effort is people, legislation and new ways of working. The technology is the easier part. There is no shortage of technologies out there. It is about getting the people focus right. Things like metrics are a people-focused aspect. If those are got right, the technological advancements are happening so fast that I would have no concern that that level of technology will not do its bit. If we focus on the people-related aspects, including metrics, we will achieve the results more quickly.