Written answers

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Food Harvest 2020 Strategy

Photo of Pat GallagherPat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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182. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the reason his Department has not achieved the targets set out in Food Harvest 2020 and has seen a decline of 6.3%; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51387/17]

Photo of Pat GallagherPat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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183. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if targets (details supplied) have been met at 2016 market price levels; the revenue loss to the economy and to the Exchequer; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51388/17]

Photo of Michael CreedMichael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 182 and 183 together.

Food Harvest 2020, published in 2010, was an industry led strategy to chart the direction of agri-food, forestry and fisheries over the decade to 2020. It has since been replaced by Food Wise 2025. Food Harvest 2020included an industry target to grow its aquaculture production in volume terms by 78% by 2020. For a wide variety of reasons, including desease outbreaks and adverse weather events, aquaculture production declined somewhat in volume terms until 2014 and has been increasing since. The value of production has increased by 36% since 2010.

While Food Wise 2025did not include any particular targets for growth of aquaculture, my Department published a National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Aquaculture Developmentin 2015. That Plan set out a vision for the sustainable development of the aquaculture sector, with 24 specified actions designed to achieve production growth of 45,000 tonnes by 2023, taking 2012 as the base year. While it is still early in the process of implementing that Plan, the growth trend since 2014 is a positive start.

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