Farmers and food industry punters sifting through the noise that has been the very tribal, public ‘debate’ about Irish agriculture and climate, have always to apply some sobriety to this public noise.
Like our national sports teams we are never as good as we are portrayed on the way up and never as bad as on the way down.
I have argued previously that the core signal regarding the true status and future development of the broad agri-food sector, is the Food Vision process.
Yet the noise from An Taisce and the environmental lobby around the legal imperatives in the sectoral carbon budgets and the threat of judicial reviews to ensure absolute compliance, would suggest that the stick outweighs any carrot for at least some of the government parties.
Climate action
This obsession with the imperative that Ireland must do right and show no flexibility or pragmatism with regard to the climate ‘crisis’ is very much at odds with the actions of other EU countries.
E.g., a month ago, Germany decided that the phase-out of diesel cars will not go ahead as per previous commitments.
We also know that Poland is looking for much longer derogations on the phasing out of coal mining and burning given its status in the Polish economy, and there are long lists of compromise-based actions across the 27 EU member states.
Moreover, the huge disruption in energy supply and overt failure of previous long-term EU energy policy has seen a much more reflective view about the resilience of EU food supply capability and a review of long-term policy across the EU, but perversely not in Ireland which is considered the ‘food island’.
Despite the onslaught from our Green Party friends, no sane person can, I believe, argue that coal is more environmentally sacrosanct than cows.
Indeed it is a fact well recognised and repeated, that Chinese investment in the construction of over 1000 coal-fired power stations has been a major reason why China tops the global emissions chart.
Nevertheless, one does see attempts at distorting this emissions reality through the use of per capita emissions figures.
So, divide the enormous figure that is Chinese emissions by the 1.4 billion people in China and you get a lower emissions per capita figure than Ireland based on adding emissions from farm animals to per capita figures for Ireland.
Science how are you! On this basis, the nonsensical solution to the climate change challenges would be to double the population rather than halving emissions.
Global warming
In reality we know we have only one global atmosphere and the volume of emissions per se, is the key driver of warming.
What we also should know, and what the German and Polish actions to protect their biggest indigenous industrial sectors reflects, is that meaningful action rather than virtue signalling noise, requires buy-in and consent.
No company trying to bring in new work practices or new technology would try to do so by ostracising or debasing the ‘old way’ of operating and the people who operated in this way.
And yet, not only have we been smothered in this simplistic anti-cow narrative for the last three years, we still hear not just the anti-livestock farming lobby, but the likes of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failing to recognise the real changes in production practices focused on improvement of environmental impact and lower emissions that are being implemented now.
Irish farming is not where it was in 2019.
The concern among farmers and the agri-food sector is that the notion that the approach to reducing agricultural emissions can’t be done through efficiency but must involve depopulation, is still driving the public narrative, even though it is not scientific.
Measuring carbon
There is a very good OECD presentation on YouTube called ‘carbon footprints for food systems’ which systematically outlines an efficiency best practice approach to food production systems.
In essence, what the presentation shows is that significant emissions reduction can be achieved by focusing on the most efficient production systems across the broad food categories; plant and animal-based, and implementing the best practices from the most carbon efficient systems.
A primary requirement for implementing this efficiency-based reduction highlighted in the presentation is having real carbon footprint measurement.
Here again, Ireland is significantly ahead of its EU neighbours in terms of actual measurement of on-farm emissions across production systems, a fact that should be acknowledged in public commentary.
At a global level, the huge challenge of the last 20 years has been to get broad acceptance of the science behind climate change and climate challenges.
Public acceptance and large-scale buy-in based on the acceptance of science continues to be the only way in which the new ways of production and consumption across our economy and society will actually be implemented.
The flawed ‘assault’ on Irish agriculture over the last three years is not a template for cross-societal buy-in regarding climate challenges; a more balanced scientific and fundamentally non tribal approach is required.