Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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My Department is actively engaged on issues relating to agriculture and climate change on both an international and national level.

At farm level, my Department and its Agencies are actively involved with the farming sector through initiatives such as the Origin Green Farm Sustainability and Quality Assurance schemes and Knowledge Transfer schemes. A key component of the Origin Green assessment is the independent farm audit where the farmer receives a feedback report on his or her farm’s performance. This allows them to make informed decisions on improving the sustainability of their farms while also improving their efficiency and farm viability. The knowledge transfer schemes, funded under the Rural Development Programme, are essential in facilitating the transfer of information from research and advisory services to farmer discussion group networks and cover a range of topics related to sustainability and climate mitigation.

My Department is supporting a number of other schemes and measures under the Rural Development Programme to help farmers improve their farm’s environmental performance. Measures such as the Agri-Environment scheme, GLAS, includes specific measures to support climate change objectives whilst our Organic farming scheme supports organic farming as an alternative farming system contributing to improving soil quality and mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Improving breeding and maintaining the health of livestock is also very important to achieving efficiency and managing emissions. This is actively supported through our Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP). This Programme ranks the efficiency of beef breeding animals on a star based system, with 5-star being the most efficient. Building on the success of this Programme I have just announced a new pilot scheme - The Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot – which will be targeted at suckler farmers and specifically aimed at further improving the carbon efficiency of beef production by measuring the weaning efficiency of suckler cows. Farmers will get detailed feedback on the performance of individual animals allowing them to identify the most productive cows in their herd. On the Dairy side, the ‘Economic Breeding Index’ is identifying the most efficient animals for grass based production system.

In terms of sequestration, or the capturing of carbon, our most significant intervention is the national afforestation programme. Afforestation and forests also play a key role in replacing energy intensive materials and providing sustainable renewable biomass to the energy sector. We are therefore, investing heavily in the Afforestation Scheme to encourage landowners to establish forests on their land. The Government has recently approved significant improvements in grant and premium rates under the agroforestry and forestry for fibre options.

My Department is also investing heavily in research and I have recently announced an additional €5.4 million in research grant awards. This brings the total grants awarded for collaborative inter-institutional agri-food research under my Department’s 2017 Competitive Research Call to over €19 million. This investment in agri-food research will support the sector to innovate in terms of production efficiency, higher value products and environmental sustainability.

We are continuously looking ahead; increased environmental ambition will be a key element of CAP Post 2020. As we look towards defining the measures and targets under the new CAP regime the recently published Teagasc report “An Analysis of Abatement Potential of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Irish Agriculture 2021-2030” is key to informing the type of abatement measures we need to focus on with a view to achieving the 2030 targets.