Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Senator Pippa Hackett):

One of the challenges is being able to measure it and being able to reward farmers appropriately for their actions, and what actions they might take on their own land. As I said, we are supporting farmers in different ways through different schemes to manage their lands in different ways. There are two projects in the midlands related to farm peat and farm carbon and, again, it is working with farmers. We are getting information from that. It is certainly giving some confidence to farmers and helping them get over some of those challenges. There is a concern among farmers as to what this will mean. They do want to be rewarded but they do not want to potentially see their farms being left in a state where they cannot continue to farm. There are data gaps we need to fill but I accept we know roughly where we need to be going. We know enough and we should be moving more swiftly in those directions. That is certainly something we should be looking into and examining further to deliver for farmers.

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