Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Agriculture has been the backbone of the Irish economy for many decades now and it continues to be the largest economic sector in rural and regional Ireland. Ireland is a world leader in beef and dairy production. If we take 2019 as a reference year, our total agrifood exports were valued at €14.5 billion. Of that impressive number, dairy accounted for €5 billion and beef accounted for €2.3 billion. I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling this motion because ;it allows us to focus on the important issues facing agriculture. Our export markets in agrifood total over 180 countries. With a 50% multiplier being a conservative figure, we can see over €10 billion per annum being delivered to the Irish economy. The beef sector alone accounts for more than 80,000 jobs on farms and in processing.

The nitrates directive, along with multiple competitive land uses, is placing further pressure on dairy and beef farm incomes in particular. Climate legislation calling for increased management of bovine gas emissions is also going to bring its own pressures. These pressures must be managed through a controlled dairy cull scheme with the assistance of farmers. The scheme must provide for an equitable dairy farmer retirement plan and for succession planning. The logic behind reducing dairy cow numbers as a means of reducing our overall agriculture emissions must be balanced against the financial risks for smaller farm holdings. Many of these will become unviable if they are forced to reduce their herds by between 10% and 20%. Beyond this, a cull scheme could also have the undesirable effect of consolidating activities, particularly in the dairy sector, with more intensive farming methods being used as a result while reducing the number of farm families in the sector, with all of the consequent economic loss to rural communities. A cull scheme must be well managed. Such a scheme may also add to the cost of milk processing fees and this must be borne in mind in the context of the future competitiveness of our exports.

The idea of a cull scheme is also largely based around some portion of a greenwashing agenda as we have not yet managed to properly analyse general farm emissions. Two dairy farms of a similar size can have very different emissions based on bovine species, soil type, pasture land, nutritional additives and lactation scheduling. It is not the case that one size fits all. In addition, carbon sequestration on farms has not yet been properly characterised in Ireland. The proportion of hedgerows, wetlands and forestry on individual farms has a significant impact on reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Ireland is one of the most efficient producers of grass-fed dairy and beef. Being asked to reduce our output is hard to understand in terms of what is happening in South America, and Brazil in particular, as they ramp up production. This must be borne in mind. We also need to look at the other pressures besetting farming including slurry containment and the nitrates directive. Many farmers are already singularly invested and very exposed to the banks in terms of the capacity that they have added in the last few years. The Minister needs to be careful about how his policy will affect those exposed to bank lending. We need to be very careful of where we are going here. The Minister has said that he has the support of farming groups. I welcome that in terms of the management of any managed cull. A lot of the advice that was given here earlier around other forms of farming, particularly forestry, have to be looked at to offer mitigation to farmers and to give them other income streams to offset any cull that may happen.

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