Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

When the pandemic ended, I had a lot of opportunities to go round the country and speak to farmers. I took every opportunity I could to do that. What I took from farmers is that the drive for increased production has pushed down unit prices. It is more work for the same amount of money. Pushing up production has not worked. Fertiliser prices are a killer in that they are so high and are linked to the price of fossil fuels. The price of feed has gone up as well. While farmers' input costs have gone up, their output price is not going up in the same way. They want something different and, as the Deputy said, farmers are open to change. We have a climate action plan which has specific actions in agriculture, including advances animal efficiency through breeding, feeding and finishing; and changes to how we keep land fertile which will reduce nitrous oxide emissions from farms. We are trying to bring in a fivefold increase in organic farming to 450,000 ha. The Deputy knows we are one of the lowest countries in Europe for organic farming which does not really make any sense when one looks at the size of our country, our culture, or our disposition.

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