Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank all participants in this debate and thank the Minister of State for his closing remarks. We expect the report will be used. I thank Deputy Ó Cuív and Deputy Ó Snodaigh, who is deputising for his colleague, Deputy Ferris, and all members of the committee who participated in the preparation of this report during committee hearings. I thank the members of the library and research service for their help. Some of them went to Scotland to draw on work there. The Scottish EPA and Scotland's Rural College hosted a conference entitled, Delivering Multiple Benefits from our Land - Sustainable Development in Practice, which was based on an agri-land use module of a climate change Bill in preparation. This issue has many facets.

I am passionate about this report. Initially, the rationale behind it was that it was clear that Food Harvest 2020 and our climate change obligations were on course for a head-on collision unless something was done to address and confront the issues and give people a better and more informed insight into what happens in farming here. In the late 1970s, I was a student in the agricultural college in Rockwell. At that time, we were told the average yield from a dairy cow was approximately 1,000 gallons, but the target was 1,500 gallons. Now the yield is probably close to 2,000 litres. The lambing target was 125 per 100 sheep, but was approximately 100 if we were lucky. Now, we probably achieve 140 or 150. The average crop of spring barley was probably 1.5 tonnes per acre.

Two tonnes was considered to be good, but three tonnes is now considered the average. In terms of the beef herd, an animal had to be four years old before it was considered fit for slaughter, whereas we are now talking about animals aged 16 to 18 months, or, realistically, 21 to 24 months. All of these improvements have been achieved at no significant cost in terms of extra admissions. If anything, emissions have been decreasing. As the Minister said in his opening remarks, the use of chemical and other fertilisers is decreasing based on cost but also as a result of more efficient farm management and land use management, improved herd health and the use of available technology, including improved genetics and breeding.

All of that has been done against the backdrop of environmental directives, habitats directives, birds directives, nutrient management plans and environmental schemes to improve the environment. There was a rush at the outset to clear ditches, put up piggeries near lakes and so on, but that is akin to somebody taking up smoking without being aware of its hazards. We have moved on, and we are continuing to move.

What we tried to do in the preparation of this report was to demonstrate clearly that the model based on grass to produce food is a good one. We should bear in mind one point about grass. Grass is a fibre that holds soil together. What is now the Sahara desert was once covered in grass on which buffalo grazed, but they took away the buffalo, which was a ruminant. I do not want to get too technical about this, but the only animals that are efficient converters of grass fibre into energy and food are ruminants - cattle and sheep. That cannot be done without them. To simply say we need to reduce our beef herd by 35% to reduce our carbon emissions is nonsense. We must bear in mind that this country produces enough food to feed 36 million people. That is not a huge number in the global sense, but it is 30 million more people than we have on this island, so we have to export.

Most of what has been achieved by way of improvements has been profit-driven for efficiency by farmers, and so it should remain. Farmers should be paid to produce food, but if that food has to be efficiently produced, so be it. If farmers are given the tools to do it, they will do it. I speak as someone who continues to be somewhat active as a farmer, although my sons might debate that, and I hope to be able to do so for a long time. I firmly believe that we do it better than anyone else.

Farmers have always embraced new systems, technology and advice. We have also embraced the most recent environmental schemes. People might laugh at this, but many of those schemes, including the rural environmental protection scheme, did not pay. The farmers funded work but for many of them it did not yield any surplus money. Anyone who had cattle in particular had to do a good deal of work.

We need to view this as more than just an agricultural policy. We should view it as a total land use policy across Europe and then draw comparisons. I made that point in an article I wrote for a local newspaper, in which I stated:

[The Irish] ecosystem in its entirety provides us with the ability to produce food and bio-fuel from fertile soils, renewable energy, carbon sequestration and the disposal of agricultural pollutants from afforestation [and marginal land] and pollination and other biodiversity services from environmentally friendly practices [such as] agro forestry [and minding our native uplands].

There are many issues that have to be addressed in that particular case, and the use of locally led, output-driven environment schemes will help towards that.

There is a public good element to everything that is done. There is a tourism element also. If we do everything else right, with our beautiful natural landscape, the good marketing people in Fáilte Ireland and other organisations, improved road networks and improved awareness through the Internet and so on, we have the ability to attract a great number of tourists in terms of what we have to offer on our land. We should draw the whole package together.

It is too simplistic just to have an agricultural policy for our land. We are selling ourselves short. We should use that as part of the constructive defence of our position. Malta produces 2% emissions from agriculture. The European Union average is 10%. I do not know Germany's output percentage-wise, but I am sure its heavy industry is pulling down its agriculture. We have a very small output from heavy industry in this country but nobody has measured its efficiency. That is a percentage that does not come into any discussions because it is a relatively low percentage, but could it be lower? Could we produce food while generating fewer emissions? I am sure we can improve, and we must keep improving, but we should do that against the backdrop of trying to produce food in an efficient way for ourselves, Europe and the world, because in the global context, simply cutting down on food production, as the Minister outlined in the statistics he presented on the growing food demand, is not the answer. We should not overestimate the growing middle class. That is a point, but it is not the most important point. Food demand is increasing. People expect to get food. We have a moral obligation to feed the planet and a moral obligation to take care of the planet. That is what we are here for. Farmers, through the centuries, have been curators of the land. There is nothing nicer than looking out at a healthy crop, a healthy field of grass or a healthy field of cattle or sheep. That is what we like to see, and that is from where we draw our satisfaction. We like to be paid for doing it, but that is the key point. As long as farmers are given the tools to do that, they will do it in the most efficient way, but we need to have a climate change debate that is honest. The basis of that debate should be facts, not perception.

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