The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association’s (ICSA’s) AGM and Annual Conference will take place on Thursday, January 31, at the Killeshin Hotel, Portlaoise, Co. Laois.
The conference’s opening session will commence at 5:30pm. Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, will address the attendees.
Speaking ahead of the event, ICSA president, Patrick Kent, outlined that beef farmers are this year, above all years, “under a lot of pressure” with the challenges they are being faced with.
The theme for this year’s conference is ‘Beef on the Brink‘.
Commenting on the theme of the event, Kent said: “Solutions will have to be found for our members. We need new thinking going forward on how to tackle these issues and we have to try to remain positive.
“Never before have we faced this multitude of challenges and Brexit is totally to the forefront.”
Continuing, Kent explained that in the long term, economic sustainability of farming is going to prove a challenge. “Farming is a long game not a short game,” he concluded.
Response to recent report
The ICSA president has also recently questioned the financing of the “Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT – Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems” report.
The report, published last Wednesday, is a joint initiative of the EAT Forum and The Lancet medical journal.
The Lancet report urges massive changes to people’s diets all over the world in order to achieve “food transformation” and reduce carbon emissions by 2050.
Also Read: Beef-bashing report recommendations ‘overly simplistic’Concluding, Kent said: “There is a massive consumerism built around unhealthy eating – health insurance, gyms, etc – and massive vested interests in getting people to eat unhealthily.”