The chair of the Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group, Prof. Thia Hennessy believes it will be “very challenging” for the agriculture sector to meet climate targets without reducing the suckler herd.
Among the recommendations in the group’s final report were voluntary diversification and extensification schemes for the beef sector.
However, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue has since said that a government scheme to reduce the Irish beef herd is “off the table“.
Climate
Prof. Hennessy, who is the head of the Department of Food Business and Development and chair of Agri-Food Economics at Cork University Business School, told Agriland that the emissions reduction targets for the agriculture sector “are very ambitious”.
“As the scientific solutions were presented to us it became more and more evident that reaching those ambitious targets without some contraction in production is going to be almost impossible,” she said.
Several farming organisations refused to sign off on the group’s final report, with the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association (INHFA) having previously withdrawn from the process entirely.
“Those two particular proposals were the ones that received the most resistance within the group. The inclusion of them in the final report was probably what caused many stakeholders to object to the report or not to sign up fully,” she said.
“My own view was that I was asked to chart a way forward to reaching the targets and with the science available, we could not reach the target without including those proposals. From my perspective, they needed to be in the report to provide the full honest account of where we are within the sector.
“After the report was submitted, stakeholders had a number of one-to-one meetings with the minister and obviously his decision arising out of those meetings was that those proposals were too controversial and too disruptive for the sector,” Hennessy said.
“I think that it will be very challenging to reach the proposed targets without some reduction in animal numbers on the beef side,” she added.
Hennessy said that it is still unknown what the implication will be if Ireland does not reach its emissions targets.
“It’s not clear at the moment that if the agriculture sector doesn’t meet its targets in 2030 what the penalty will be and how that would be imposed.
“I think that if we knew that we’d have more urgency and we’d be making more progress. For me it just seems like the urgency isn’t there at the moment,” she said.
Consultation
Some farming organisations have been critical of how much actual consultation took place with them through the meetings of the Food Vision groups.
“We listened to what the stakeholders had to say. I absolutely appreciate all of the concerns that are there, but in terms of bringing proposals forward to meet the emissions reduction targets, they just weren’t forthcoming from the stakeholders in terms of feasible solutions.
“So the final report contains, I think, the best scientific information available at the moment. It contains the cost benefits insofar as we were able to estimate them within the timeframe we had, and it clearly outlines at the start of the report that it doesn’t have the full support of the stakeholders present.
“In terms of being given an extremely difficult job to do, it was the best I could manage and I would challenge anybody to see if they could have gotten a better outcome,” Hennessy said.
The Food Vision beef group chair maintains that there was some support for the diversification proposals.
“This would allow suckler cow farmers to reduce their cow numbers and receive a payment on the cows that they are taking out of the system. It would allow them to use that payment to invest in more environmentally-friendly practices for their remaining animals.
“So I think it’s unfortunate that that proposal has been completely taken off the table, especially when it still exists as a possibility for dairy sector,” she said.
Division
Hennessy believes that a “divisiveness” has emerged between the farming community and the rest of society in the climate debate, which she said is “really unhelpful and unfortunate”.
“The emissions for the consumption of fossil fuels are counted at consumption, not at production levels, and I think the fact that it’s different for food has really put the burden of change on the farming community and I can understand why farmers are really frustrated with the process.
“I think that there’s lots of unhelpful media reports about everybody moving to plant-based foods and kind of unrealistic versions of the future really when we talk about climate change.”
She also feels that there is division within the farming sector itself when it comes to the dairy and beef sectors.
“When we look within the beef sector it has been contracting, emissions have been reducing, total animal numbers have been reducing because the suckler cow herd has been reducing, and the beef sector on its own could comfortably meet the agriculture targets if the dairy sector wasn’t growing.”
Sheep
Hennessy recently chaired the first meeting of the Food Vision Sheep Group which focused on the current financial challenges facing the sector as a result of high input costs and low prices.
“The situation is so grave at the moment that the stakeholders couldn’t really come to the table to discuss the longer term issues without looking at the short term issues.”
The chair has written to Minister McConalogue to convey the position of stakeholders in the group that support offered under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are insufficient.
“We don’t have a time schedule as such in terms of reestablishing the group to look at wider issues. The next stage is to look at the climate change action plan for the sheep sector.
“The sheep sector is a much smaller contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions overall.
“So I think we’ll have to start off and look at things like the recent trends, what’s happening with animal numbers, flock numbers, what the state of play is with the adoption of mitigation measures as they exist already and what the further adoption of those can deliver,” she said.