The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has claimed that a dairy exit scheme would restrict the growth of dairy farms that are not in the scheme.
The IFA has given a submission to the Food Vision Dairy Group and the Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group on two potential schemes to reduce dairy cow and suckler cow numbers.
The submission was in particular response to a consultation on a dairy exit scheme that began in June.
In the submission document, the IFA said: “While the [dairy exit scheme] has been portrayed as being voluntary in nature, the scheme must demonstrate a net decline in animal numbers.
“Hence, an introduction of any such scheme would immediately restrict the growth of dairy farms [that] do not take up the scheme.
“The IFA outrightly rejects the introduction of any herd reduction scheme on this premise for dairy cows,” the association said.
The IFA submission covered cow reduction schemes for both the dairy and suckler sectors, and outlined the reasons why the organisation in rejecting both schemes.
The submission said the approach taken by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to set out sectoral roadmaps through Food Vision “sub-groups” to meet agriculture’s emissions reduction target of 25% “ignores the inherent complexity of the agriculture sector”.
“Isolating each individual sector ignores the interdependence of each sector… Therefore, rather than continuing the process of making individual submissions to the dairy and beef Food Vision sub-groups, it is our view that approaching this as one collective will deliver better results.”
Similarly to other stakeholders which have come out against the scheme, the IFA’s submission drew attention to the issue of carbon leakage, i.e. that a reduction in dairy production here would be offset by increases in production in regions where dairy production is less sustainable.
“Given that Ireland’s carbon footprint for dairy and beef production is substantially below the global average while the global [human] population continues to grow, it stands to reason that any reduction in milk and beef production in Ireland will lead to carbon leakage and an associated net gain in global emissions,” the association said.
The submission added: “[We] will not support measures that will reduce food production, reduce the productive capacity of farms, sterilise land, or impose a cap on cow numbers. The [schemes] proposed will likely lead to some or all of these concerns.”