Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for asking the question. We have already had a discussion on it. When the Food Harvest 2020 targets were set and the policy was put in place by the previous Government, the three buzzwords were smart, green and growth. This is fundamentally what we are trying to do in agriculture. We are trying to get growth while ensuring it is based on innovation and new and better ways of doing things and in a way that is green and protects the environment, watercourses, biodiversity, rural life and rural incomes in the best way we possibly can with regard to reducing the emissions intensity of food production systems.

We are the only country in the world that is auditing farmers and how they run their farms from a sustainability point of view. This is what has been rolled out over the past two years on beef farms and what is being rolled out on dairy farms. Farmers sign up to outsiders coming in and auditing them once every 18 months. This is a sustainability audit system which has international certification.

We are planning growth and expansion between now and 2020. A group of people is planning for growth between now and 2025 to replace the Food Harvest 2020 strategy. The sector constantly needs a ten-year horizon for ambitions so that we all know where we are going and what we are trying to finance with regard to growth and strategy. By the middle of the summer we will launch a new 2025 strategy for agrifood expansion and growth and technological advancement. A major part of the challenge is sustainability. People should not simply state that as our target is to reduce emissions by 20%, agriculture must apply that 20% reduction. It is a much more complex argument than this. I assure the Deputy we will do everything we can and we will be a global leader in finding ways to reduce the emissions intensity of our food production systems, but we will allow the country to fulfil its full potential in terms of the volumes of food we are capable of producing from the national resources we have.

See this speech in context