In most countries across the world, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) report was seen as the ultimate ‘wake up call’ for fossil fuel usage.
Across economies rich and poor, the huge challenge of moving beyond coal oil and gas as energy sources is increasingly recognised as being both inevitable, but hugely challenging and costly nonetheless.
In Ireland, it seems the local obsession with moving Irish agriculture from livestock farming into whatever, has blinded all the ‘woke’ folk to the impact of 200 years of CO2 emissions and, for them, climate change is all about methane.
To be very clear, Irish farming and food processing, which supports 260,000 jobs a year, is not resistant to, or suspicious of, change, as is often stated by the Green Party and some national media.
Agri-food adaptability
The Irish agri-food sector has demonstrated huge adaptability over the last 20 years transitioning e.g. from a frozen beef based meat industry to a fresh retail serving capability in the 2000s, and adapting to the abolition of EU milk quotas and internal market supports to marketing 8.3 billion litres milk equivalent in 2020.
Ironically, given the Green Party view that we should only produce enough food for ourselves alone, this capability to adapt to change/market volatility, is principally driven by the fact that up to 90% of our food output is exported to 130 countries around the globe.
Irish agriculture is currently addressing its environmental and emissions impacts and will continue to meet both new regulations and customer validation assurances as required.
At the same time it will build on the practical experience of meeting consumer demand for its grass-based meat and dairy output.
If our mainstream media was to include farming and food industry practitioners in their assessment of climate and environmental challenges, they would know this.
It really is appalling how binary, tribal and exclusive the supposed national conversation around climate challenges has become.
Is there also not some sense that excluding everybody in the sector from the debate is not likely to get buy-in by the sector?
Narrow-minded viewpoint
The agri-food sector is resistant to a purely ideological view that states that 95% of farmers are ‘farming wrong’, just because they are not organic or plant based.
It’s hard to credit that this ‘belief’ is now framing current and future policy for Ireland’s largest economic sector. It is a bit like ‘believing’ that Ireland’s pharmaceutical sector should abandon science-based medicines and drugs and embrace homeopathy.
As I have said in previous articles, Irish agriculture was dismissed in the early 2000s by national media, the only thing that has changed since then is the ideology.
Back then ‘wokeness’ was acceptance of globalisation and the ‘reality’ that Ireland should reduce its agri production in favour of the emergence of Brazil as a food superpower.
Now it is climate crisis, and don’t mention the previous view of Brazil, and even further still, don’t mention deforestation.
Grassland carbon storage
Meanwhile, a very real driver of the surge in popular support for decarbonisation of global economies, is the sense that a catastrophic outcome of global heating is the increased number of forest fires this summer across the globe.
This is a multi-layered blow, in that not only is there loss of life and homes, the fires are destroying the carbon stored in trees over many years as well as future sequestration capability.
It is well known, but not generally reported in mainstream media, that grassland is a carbon sink.
As per a research paper from UC Davis in 2018, when and if grasslands burn, these fires don’t destroy carbon previously sequestered and stored, or indeed future capability, because the carbon is stored in the soil.
Biomethane and grassland
There is also an evolving understanding of the capability of both grass and slurry to become a significant feedstock for biomethane generation.
This can play a vital role in providing a renewable alternative to natural gas, which is currently providing most of the thermal load required to dry Ireland’s dairy output.
So dismissing grass sequestration in pursuit of an anti-livestock farming agenda would cause impacts that would reduce Ireland’s carbon sequestering capability and decarbonisation of its industry.
Given grasslands’ dual capability and sequestration advantage over forestry in an ever warming planet, should we not be looking at practical ways in which we preserve our grassland as a carbon sink?
At the same time we can look at how we can reduce harmful emissions from the agricultural activity that is required to underpin grassland maintenance.
Is this not the core of the Paris Accord / United Nations mandate: “Increasing the ability to adapt to adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production?”