Irish agriculture can cope with the evolving reality of sustainability and environmental challenges by investing in better practice and complying with a balanced regulatory approach to the evolving science around climate change. But can Irish politics keep up?
Ireland’s evolution as the ‘food island’, and indeed its future performance as a major food producing country, largely depends on our agri-food sector’s capability to produce and market milk and meat products for 40 million people worldwide.
It is global consumers tastes and preferences, and a requirement for affordable nutrition that is sustainably and safely produced, that underpin the capability of the Irish agri sector to support 260,000 jobs in the rural and regional economy.
Exports for agriculture
While exposure / dependence on export markets has long been the core factor in sustaining our agri-food sector, the route to market has changed quite dramatically over time.
In truth, and in particular from the late 1980s until 2002 or so, Ireland’s export dependence was hugely supported by EU export subsidies, and in the case of the dairy sector in particular, by EU internal market supports.
All the more remarkable, since 2015, and perhaps most encouragingly in 2020, Ireland has exported up to €13.5 billion worth of food and drink products to 130 countries worldwide, without subsidy or EU support.
The country did so despite the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the closure of restaurant and food service markets worldwide, not to mention the overhanging challenge of Brexit impacts from a market that used to take 40% of our output.
This evolution, focusing on meeting global market imperatives, has been hugely challenging for all parts of the agri sector, but has fundamentally been based on product integrity driving demand for repeat business.
Awareness of sustainability
To be very clear, global consumers of Irish food are every bit as aware and ‘woke’ as Irish domestic consumers about the integrity of Ireland’s grass-fed meat and dairy offerings.
Also, as the sustainability and environmental impact ‘route to market’ requirements grow and evolve, global consumers have increasingly demanded verification of sustainability claims for Irish produce, and will continue to require validated assurances of improvements in this performance.
Somewhat ironically, while adaptation to global food demand trends drove increased demand for Ireland’s food offering, the substance of each of the government’s policies around its five-yearly analyses of the Irish food and agri-business sector, has primarily reflected Irish political thinking of the time.
So the 2000/2005 policy visions were low key reflecting the core political and economic wisdom of the time – that Irish agriculture was a ‘sunset’ industry and Ireland Inc. should be placing its bets on new and innovative (smart economy) sectors.
Appreciation for agriculture
By 2010, the realities of the economic collapse caused by the financial sector had sobered up the ‘sunset’ view, and in an economy facing huge debt and unemployment, the jobs and export growth potential of the Irish agri-food sector were rediscovered and championed.
While this reversal in attitudes was welcome, let us remember and record that the actual achievement of growth in jobs and exports and Irish economy spend was facilitated by various elements.
- Changes in EU policy including the abolition of milk quotas;
- Delivered and achieved collectively by farmers and food processors who invested in the capacity to increase output to create jobs, and found new markets for the existing pre-quota output and the extra 3 billion litres of milk and increased beef output generated by this investment.
So as we examine the latest ‘Food Vision 2030‘ report and the political environment surrounding it, it is deja vu all over again, with a return to an ambivalent view of the Irish agri-food sector.
Perhaps more shockingly is the indifference, in a broad mainstream policy context, to the agri sector’s continuing capability to support and create jobs and exports and economic activity across the Irish economy.
The core concern has to be that this indifference is not only out of kilter with informed global consumer demand for sustainably produced food, it is largely driven by a combination of ignorance of the real economic impact of the sector, and an anti-livestock farming lobby that is promoting an agenda totally removed from climate challenges.
So if politics and economics don’t catch up with science and real global food demand, current anti-agriculture policy will continue to advocate suppressing Irish agricultural output in the face of the continuing global endorsement of Ireland’s sustainable grass-based food offering.
Moreover, the huge national challenge of balancing budgets, addressing spending deficits post Covid-19, and trying to address the current 18% unemployment level in the country and managing evolving Brexit impacts, require a fully functioning agri-food sector.