Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I will take this opportunity not to speak on horses but perhaps to speak on climate and agriculture if possible. In many ways, the agricultural community has been a leading player when it comes to the change of agricultural practices, in particular in the last few years. It feels that in many ways this has not been acknowledged. We all realise that climate change is a core part of our society and life, and that changes in practice in transportation, energy production and farming are all key to us making sure we reach our targets in 2050. As the Minister rightly said, they are ambitious without a shadow of a doubt.

We need to probably start telling the story about what farming has done over the last few decades and in many ways over the last few years. The story of us producing enough food for 50 million people is a starting point. We are a really significant player in the world food market. We provide food for so many people, particularly in the European Union. If we look at where we went from the Second World War to now, Ireland has become a real driver in that regard. That is the subject people do not mention or talk about enough.

We might look at our fertiliser practices and what we have changed, in particular over the last 24 months. That is a really significant statement. Over the last 24 months, more than 6,500 farmers are now spreading the majority, if not all, of their slurry by the trailing shoe method. If I had stood in the Seanad Chamber in 2016 and said that, I would have been laughed out of the House. That happened because of significant investment by the Department through the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, in particular, and infrastructure such as the trailing shoe slurry tanker. Nearly every dairy farmer in my part of the world at the moment is spreading slurry with the trailing shoe, which means we are saving more than 80% of the ammonium going into the atmosphere and also bringing nitrogen directly down into the plant. That is a really positive story about farming changing and moving with the times and becoming more economical with fertilisers, in particular the manures.

Farmers know one thing. They know that 25 years ago they sold their product because of traceability. We needed to make sure our product was traceable and that there was traceability from the fork all the way to where the animal was born. That came about because of the foot and mouth outbreak at the time. Now it is about making sure our product is sustainable. If we are to get access to the global markets of 50 million people, which we are doing, our product will not sell unless it is sustainable, which it is in so many different aspects. We need to start talking about the sustainable product we have. We have opportunities to expand the farming remit of so many farmers and to incorporate them into other parts of agriculture. I will often say that farmers need to be a part of the solution when it comes to forestry. The number of farmers who are not involved in the forestry game at the moment because of certain issues within the sector is unfortunate. There is potential for farmers in every part of Ireland to be involved in forestry. However, that will probably take a change of ethos within the Department, as well as a change of ethos in other issues. In particular, I mean the licensing issue and the afforestation programme. If we had farmers who had 100 acres planted, maybe not on their own land but somewhere else, for a significant part of an area in forestry, that would be an exceptional driver for the economy and for the environment. There is serious potential there, but we just need to tap into it. That is one of the things we need to start talking about. Senator Murphy's analogy of cooking apples was stark. Every farmer who I know of probably had as an acre or two. That provides a potential to cover this, but we need to start thinking about it. I realise that the new CAP reforms give potential in that regard. Again, we need to start talking about that. A certain percentage of one's landholding can now be a part of that solution.

Down in my part of the world, we are blessed with distilleries. We have wonderful distilleries in west Cork, Clonakilty and down in Midleton. These are world drivers in the distilling market. They do not reach the peak of the market unless they are sustainable. That is why they are there. What we have done in that industry alone is an acknowledgement of how that industry has embraced change and how it has become part of the solution. I want to acknowledge the distilleries for what they have done, in the amount of local employment they give, but also in how they interact with the farming community. Hundreds of acres of malt and barley are grown every year. That is a big driver in these towns. West Cork Distillers employs 20% of the population of Skibbereen. That is the driver in our economy. That is a significant driver for us. We need to start promoting and talking about that.

I had the pleasure of going to Bandon with the Minister a few months ago to visit the Farm Zero C project at the Carbery farm. It will be involved in making sure that the farming community has the ability to learn how it can reduce its carbon footprint in dairy farms in west Cork. That is a knowledge transfer scheme and a test farm. It is bringing in different varieties of grass. It is proving how technology can be part of the solution. It is also bringing in groups of farmers. That is the chain. When we can bring farmers onto farms to show them the new farming practices then we make the changes. We make significant changes. The Minister and I had a wonderful afternoon that day. That is the kind of project that we need to promote and talk about.

Today, the farming community in many ways feels that it is being blamed for absolutely everything. Farmers do not think they are getting the acknowledgement for the amount of food and economic prosperity that they have brought to rural Ireland. We need to change this narrative. Farming is a good news story. It has achieved so much in such a short space of time. It is not the problem, it is the solution. So many people want to consider it just to be the problem. I would say to the Minister that the narrative must change. It must be about positive farming and about showing exactly what we have achieved in a short space of time. When we move to the new technologies, such as the protected urea, protected fertilisers and the new varieties of grass they are growing in Bandon in that Farm Zero C project, that is the future and that is why we will be a viable agricultural industry going forward. However, if we keep with the narrative of hammering the farming community and talking it down, we will see unfortunate knock-on effects for rural Ireland.

This debate here today in the Seanad is an important one. It gives an opportunity to our Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to lay out his thoughts about how we are going to reach our targets. It also gives Members of the Seanad an opportunity to talk up farming, to talk up what it has achieved and to acknowledge that they are up for the challenge and that they will succeed in climate change and in reaching these targets.