A possible scheme to reduce the number of dairy cows in the country has been slammed by the former president of Macra, Thomas Duffy.
Duffy, who served as Macra president from 2019 to 2021 and who, last month, completed a two year term as vice-president of the EU young farmers organisation CEJA, was speaking yesterday (Thursday, July 20) at the Energy and Farm Diversification Show at Gurteen College, Co. Tipperary.
During a panel discussion on Irish agriculture’s 25% emissions reduction target for 2030, Duffy condemned the idea of a reduction scheme – also referred to by farm oganisations and some politicians as a cow cull scheme – as “an absolute waste of money”.
A preliminary consultation is currently underway involving the member groups of the Food Vision Dairy Group – which includes, among other bodies, farm organisations and processor representatives – on the possible design of a scheme.
Some stakeholders are understood to be tentatively in favour of a cull scheme, believing that a scheme to allow farmers to quit dairying would be suitable to the personal circumstances of some farmers.
However, Macra has been consistent in its staunch opposition to the idea, instead advocating for a farm succession scheme.
Duffy expressed much the same views as the organisation he once held the reins of.
Speaking during the panel discussion – which included Minister of State at the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Pippa Hackett; Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) environment chairperson Paul O’Brien; and Teagasc emissions research officer Prof. Gary Lanigan – Duffy said a cull scheme “is a terrible idea”.
“When talking about the direction of the national herd, I’ll put up my hand up and say a cull cow scheme is a terrible idea, absolute waste of money. I don’t mind saying that,” he commented.
The panel was moderated by broadcaster and former agriculture minister Ivan Yates, who challenged Duffy by saying the scheme would be voluntary.
Duffy responded by saying: “I don’t care. It’s a waste of money. You’re putting money into something that’s not productive for farmers to do. It is a very bad policy, end of story, as far as I’m concerned.
“That money would be far better spent by doing incentives, like sexed semen.”
Yates commented that a cull scheme would facilitate the exit from the sector of those that want to do so, to which Duffy responded by saying that was a succession issue.
“How do we expect people to make investments in their farms that mightn’t pay back for 25 years when so many of them are in their 50s and 60s? [If] you want to know about what you need to do about adopting the technology, you need to get more young people in,” the former Macra president said.
“I don’t want to say that only young people adopt technology, but that is the reality, that if they see a future for their farm, they are more likely to invest in that future. So no, save the money on [a cull scheme], put it into better measures.”
The need for a cull scheme was also questioned by another panelist, namely Prof. Lanigan from Teagasc, who was involved in the development of the new Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC), which was published by Teagasc last week.
Referring to suggestions that meeting the 25% emissions reduction target was going to be impossible without a cull, Lanigan said: “I think that’s wrong, quite frankly.
“We’ve run the sums. We’ve spent a year running the numbers, [and] we think we can get there without a large scale cull.”
Prof. Lanigan did say that, in order to meet the reduction target, changes in the make up in the national herd would be likely.
“There will be shifts in the herd. There is going to be changes in the make up of the national herd. We will probably end up with slightly more dairy cows, with less suckler cows, with more dairy beef in the system, and a lot less fertiliser in the system,” he said.
The Teagasc researcher also said that, in the first carbon budget period (to 2025), there will be a focus on reducing the environmental impact of nitrogen, before turning a shaper focus on methane emissions in the following carbon budget (to 2030).
“In terms of the other things we need to do, really the first thing for this carbon budget for the next two to three years is to go aggressively at nitrogen, and after that, in the second carbon budget, to go aggressively at methane,” Prof. Lanigan said.