Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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61. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will outline the potential of a carbon farming initiative in the transformation of the sustainability profile of the farming sector. [18080/24]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Minister knows that farmers worry that their transition to a sustainable model of farming will not sustain prosperous family farms into the long term. There are many in this House and outside it who want to fan the fears of farmers. I believe a clear pathway to a carbon farming approach could reassure many farmers. To date, the detail in that regard is scanty, which creates uncertainty.

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

My Department has committed to the development of an enabling framework, which can potentially reward farmers and landowners partaking in emissions mitigation and carbon removal activities. However, we are awaiting direction from Europe on this. On 20 February 2024, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU reached a provisional agreement on the carbon removals and carbon farming, CRCF, regulation, establishing the first EU-wide voluntary framework for certifying carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products generated in Europe. The European Parliament voted to approve the draft CRCF regulation on 10 April 2024. The final legal text must now be formally adopted by Council before being published in the Official Journal of the European Union and entering into force.

Discussions will continue on the implementation. The Commission intends to adopt the first set of certification methodologies within one year from the entry into force of the CRCF regulation.

My Department will continue to monitor developments closely to guide and inform Ireland's policy direction on carbon farming.

In tandem with developments at the EU level, there is a commitment to develop a national framework for carbon farming here. In September 2023, my Department held a public consultation on carbon farming, and positive feedback was received from stakeholders regarding the opportunity to diversify farm incomes. Stakeholders were supportive of an approach that included carbon removal, greenhouse gas reductions and biodiversity measures in a national carbon farming framework. Furthermore, stakeholders considered it important that the framework supports and compliments the environmental measures within the Common Agricultural Policy strategic plan.

In parallel with the public consultation, a carbon farming working group was established to oversee the development of the framework. Nationally, there are knowledge and data gaps - we are aware of those - that will need to be bridged to support carbon farming. In response, a number of key research and demonstration activities have been identified and funded in this regard.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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First, I welcome what the Minister of State has said, but so long as there is no clear picture of what a revenue stream from sound environmental farming will mean in ten or 20 years' time, this uncertainty and unease will continue. We know, for example, that raising water levels on certain lands has huge carbon dividends. We know that benchmarking and reducing emissions by sequestration or altering methods can have very substantial dividends.

However, the Minister of State put her finger on it. We continue to be hidebound by data gaps. Is it not the case that at this point we need to just take a best endeavour approach to rewarding these changes? Okay, we may overpay some farmers but it is an important long-term national endeavour. I fear we are waiting for data that will never come, and we need a strategy that outlines a future before that point.

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

I thank the Deputy and agree with him. We have a sense of what we know we should be doing. On the data piece, I agree that we could wait forever for exact data, and it is continually evolving anyway in some regards. Even recently, data from Teagasc last year showed that we have overestimated some of the figures regarding emissions from organic soils and that some of the soils are in fact wetter than we had given them credit for. In one sense, there is a comfort there in that farmers have been able to farm on those lands. I know there are fears with regard to what any sort of rewetting proposals might look like. It is important we communicate that there are opportunities here to continue farming, maybe in a less intensive way, on certain lands.

I agree with the sentiments that we should just do our best effort to engage on this. I suppose we are through some of the schemes we have out there already. I think there is already engagement from farmers in measures that support not only carbon in soils but the wider biodiversity piece, and that is to be welcomed.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Is it not the case that if we are to see a significant scaling-up of activity, and I think that is necessary, there are going to have to be substantial rewards linked to them? Surely, on a no-regrets basis, we should be making those substantial rewards available so that a step change can be considered by people who want a long-term commercial and prosperous family future. We need to take a slight step of imagination in the approach we take to this.

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.