Despite an ambitious climate plan, Ireland remains one of the highest per capita carbon emitters in the EU in contrast to most EU countries and many large economies of the developed world which are already cutting their greenhouse gases.

One of our chief headaches is that our land is a significant carbon emitter due to intensive agriculture and drainage of peatlands as well as a dispersed population with a heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

At the same time, Bord Bia, Teagasc and the Government continue to praise Irish agriculture’s "sustainable model". On a recent trade mission to Japan, Margaret Butler, dairy ingredients manager at Bord Bia told a group of Japanese dairy buyers that the way we farm in Ireland was "environmentally benign", while Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue suggested at the World Food Forum in Rome last year that Ireland can be the sustainable food capital of the world.

The evidence

EPA director-general Laura Burke refutes this, suggesting that from examination of the science, "the environmental sustainability of the sector is not supported by the evidence. Agriculture needs to be able to validate performance around producing food with low environmental input." 

The evidence shows that farm waste, especially from livestock farms, has, in many wealthy countries, become the biggest cause of water pollution.

Continuing to market Irish agriculture as ‘environmentally benign’ and sustainable denies the reality of the impact of grass-fed beef and dairy farming on both climate and biodiversity; and is a serious reputational risk for the agri-food sector in Ireland.

Dairy farms with single grass species mean little survives in these fields. Birds have no place to nest, insects have nothing to eat, and no flowers bloom. In many of the places where livestock is farmed, the land cannot absorb the slurry produced and it ends up in the river.

The more land that farming occupies, the less is available for forests, wetlands and wild grasslands and the greater the loss of wildlife.

Science (2018) reported that pasture-fed beef and lamb have by far the worst impacts — three or four times worse, according to a scientific review in Nature Climate Change (2013) than beef raised intensively on grain, harmful as this is. This is because of the lower efficiency of converting grass into protein and the slower growth of pastured animals: more methane is released from their stomachs and nitrous oxide from their dung.

Continuing to market Irish agriculture as ‘environmentally benign’ and sustainable denies the reality of the impact of grass-fed beef and dairy farming on both climate and biodiversity; and is a serious reputational risk for the agri-food sector in Ireland.

CAP changes

One of the changes in the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments for farmers for 2023 requires at least 4% of the land on all farms receiving CAP farm payments to be set aside for ‘non-productive’ purposes.

Previously such requirements applied to just 4% of Irish farmers who were required to assign a proportion of land to ecological focus areas. That has changed to apply to 100% of farmers.

Farmers will also be able to receive payments on land parcels with up to 50% of ineligible features such as scrub or woodland from 2023 onwards. Previously farmer’s land parcels could not have more than 10% of what had been known as ‘ineligible features’ such as copses, woodland, habitat, and rock. This means that once the beneficial feature in a parcel is less than 50%, there is no reduction in the eligible area of the parcel.

While these changes to EU farm payments are welcome, Ireland’s sustainable agricultural development has been criticised by environmental NGOs as lacking ambition to address the biodiversity and climate crisis.

With less than 5% of the CAP budget being targeted to support farmers to halt biodiversity loss, this will increase threats to farmland birds according to Oonagh Duggan, head of advocacy with BirdWatch Ireland (BWI). She told an Oireachtas Committee in 2022 that an urgent transformation of Irish agriculture "remained elusive". The draft CAP strategic plan for 2023 – 2027 was "very weak… with nothing substantive to tackle high methane levels, and unclear outcomes for the investment in nitrogen reduction measures."

"Much greater support and targeting of actions and funding is needed on all farmland, especially high nature farmland and pulling the brakes on the intensification model," Ms Duggan concluded.

Key issue

While the plan had some improvements for farmland biodiversity, "it is not an emergency response". This is really the key issue. Agriculture is by far the most significant pressure impacting on Ireland’s biodiversity, water and air quality, and greenhouse gas emissions and the measures in place are nowhere near enough to address the combined crises we are now faced with.

Studies from across Europe show that if a minimum of 10% to 14% of agricultural land were to be non-productive, then birds and other wildlife would recover, but at landscape level, 26% to 33% may be required for recovery.

BWI suggested in 2022 that at least 10% space for nature must apply to all farms in CAP in line with EU Biodiversity Strategy goals. Studies from across Europe show that if a minimum of 10% to 14% of agricultural land were to be non-productive, then birds and other wildlife would recover, but at landscape level, 26% to 33% may be required for recovery.

The UK government has made a legal commitment to ensure that 30% of its land is protected for nature by 2030. In order to meet these commitments, the UK National Food Strategy (2021) suggests that "we will have to ask a lot from our land and those who tend it." 

The UK Government Climate Change Committee stated that meat consumption must reduce by 20-50% in order for the UK to reach net zero by 2050 — with a 30% reduction over the next decade. This is best achieved by nudging consumers into changing habits and the development of alternative proteins.

The Strategy suggests the development of a "nature-positive, carbon-negative food system" with the development of detailed plans that will draw on diverse methods of agriculture, including regenerative farming practices that work with nature instead of against it. 

The suggestion is that some farmers will develop and adopt more sustainable practices — including some that will deliberately lower their yields, and some that will return the land entirely to nature. More food will have to be produced from a smaller fraction of land without resorting to the intensive farming practices that have done so much damage.

The report suggests that this feat of acrobatics is achievable with a "concerted effort of will". 

"We must invest in the latest science — AI robots and new breeding techniques — to increase yields without polluting the land. We must unleash the potential of soilless farming, develop new proteins and tap the plant-farming potential of the oceans instead of just pillaging them for fish." 

This is the kind of ambition and evidence-based climate strategy that is currently missing from Irish agricultural policy to slash carbon emissions in the sector.

Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork and former director of human health and nutrition, Safefood