Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We face a real crisis. If we do not change our ways, we will see the demise of the family farm and the rise of an industrial farming model that will not serve our people, secure our future or benefit our society. I met a friend the other day who is a farmer in County Kerry. She cited a statistic - I do not know if is accurate but when I asked her to source it she said it came from Radio Kerry - that no one stands to inherit 60% of farms in Kerry. I believe that figure is probably about right. What are we going to do? The average age of beef farmers is 57 years, which means that in ten years 60% of those farms will become forestry or join a mega-farm.

Visiting the west in the summer, I met a man just on the right side of 50 who said he was the youngest participant on a training scheme for young farmers. I represent Dublin Bay South but I was stopped in the street once last week by a beef farmer and my office also received a phone call from a beef farmer asking what should they do. I did not have an easy answer for them because I am a Deputy for Dublin Bay South. This, however, is my view. We need a national land use plan. Teagasc has fought that suggestion in the Committee on Climate Action when we have argued for it and the Government did not provide for such a plan in the climate report. However, we need to plan what type of farming goes where. We cannot continue to have ABP, Kepak and other companies deciding that. We need a plan to decide what types of forestry and rewilded wilderness should go where. How will we approach our river basin management plans that integrate with all of those issues? Critically, what is the social dimension connected to a land development plan? Will we abandon counties Kerry and Leitrim? I do not think so.

We need to change our ways. We need to do a land use plan in conjunction with the new Common Agricultural Policy. My understanding of the EU approach is that it is not a top-down one. It sets the nine objectives, most of which are green and with most of which I agree. It provides that is it is up to member states to decide how to achieve these objectives.

We need to stop the current method of paying farmers. I attended the meeting of committee on agriculture some weeks ago when we discussed the beef issue. The simple truth, which no one disagreed with which is the nub of this problem, is that we are trading on an Origin Green brand and we are getting an international commodity price, as the Taoiseach said today. That is the problem. Our farmers produce very high quality product compared with other systems, particularly in the area of suckler beef. However, they are getting a lousy price and that has to change. How do we do that? The Agriculture Commissioner, Mr. Phil Hogan, has suggested the use of protected geographical indicators, whereby Irish beef, particularly suckler cow beef, would be considered special. The Department is looking at this proposal and some of the farm organisations support it. That is one way we could go. If we are to make our products special and be Origin Green, let us be really Origin Green. I am sorry if this is difficult but that will mean no longer having live exports. We cannot tell Green Party in the German market who would pay the higher premium that we are Origin Green and concerned with animal welfare, while at the same time shipping cattle to Libya and getting a lousy price for them for the farmer.

It will also mean that we will have smaller numbers and will also diversify because we cannot bet everything on international commodity markets. The Minister said that 50% of our beef is minced. We will not get the best price by providing every mince burger in Europe to keep this whole industrial farming going. The Origin Green product is not at the industrial end of production. The beef processor is at the industrial end. The farmers are so small that the power imbalance is significant. We need to change towards a real protected geographical indicator, which is connected to a real change in how we farm, and use all of the skills and quality that exists in Irish farming. Cattle should be grass fed but not in monoculture ryegrass deserts that are pumping our soil full of nitrogen and polluting our rivers and waterways to get as much grass out as possible. I am told by the leading academic experts in grassland management that mixed sward is where the future lies because it is more nutrient-rich and better for the animals' health. There are stronger roots so that when one has a drought one does not have the scorched earth we saw last summer. The Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, will have seen in the south east last year that our grassland systems could not cope. Three times in recent years we have been unable to feed animals here because the grass system failed as a result of climate change. We need to completely change our whole grassland management and move away from the pumped, high input, high cost system we use now which uses high levels of fertiliser that pollute the waters and adopt a much more resilient and biodiverse system that costs less, is based on better nutrients and the protected geographical indicator. Then we will really be the Origin Green country and we will get premium prices.

This would also help us. It will not be easy to pay farmers premium prices for genuine Origin Green product but I think we can do so if we really go for it.

However, Europe will not give it to us if it is not real and certainly the consumers will not buy if it is not real.

Second, we pay for storing carbon. One of our leading experts from the European Greens who negotiated the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, reform, made a simple point, namely, that some of our upland grasslands, which would not be the best of grasslands - it would not be comparable to the Golden Vale - would be land where suckler cows graze. He said the best carbon management of that land, marginal grasslands on the hill, is to keep livestock on it grazing, not the big continental breeds but the lighter more indigenous Irish breeds. I have been told the advantage of that is to stop the land reverting to forest, which would drain the land and release the carbon. Rogier Schulte from Teagasc made the case three, four or five year ago when I was talking to him that we need a land use plan because the environmental case and the better case for agriculture go together. It is about time all of us realise that. We need to have a certain humility and to go to the farmers and say we may have the way forward that is better than some of the other political alternatives that have been laughing at us for the past three or four decades and that we are the ones to get them the better price.

There is a huge amount of skills other than farming skills in the areas of protecting biodiversity, testing water quality to make sure we restore pristine water conditions, educating a new generation of young farmers and paying farmers to do that before all these skills are lost. We need to improve access to land so that everyone feels they have a sense of connection to this. We need to connect farms to local schools. We have started to provide lunches in schools and we could contract farmers, say, six months in advance, advise them we will have a demand for vegetables, potatoes and meat in the local school in six months time and ask them if they can provide that produce. We could ask farmers if they could accommodate school visits to their farms as part of that connection. In the same way we could be connecting local markets. Why is it we only have the English Market in Cork and the Milk Market in Limerick? Why do we not have the same type of market in Dublin, Galway, Waterford and every other town? That is the way we will get over this. By doing that we would be living up to the Origin Green brand and making it all a holistic response. That is the scale of the change and response we need to connect the consumer. We should not forget the consumer in all this. The consumers are the ones who will set the pace. They will be eating less meat. They will be on planetary diets. It will be a more rare and special thing, something the consumer would pay well for, but we should not to be laughing at people if they become vegan or reduce their meat intake. That is their choice. We should not distance the consumer in this. By bringing consumers along with us and involving them in the process we will get the money to pay the farmers properly and rightly.

See this speech in context