“Don’t neglect technologies already available to reduce emissions” – those are the words of the head of dairy knowledge transfer at Teagasc, Dr. Joe Patton.
Dr. Patton was speaking to Agriland editor Stella Meehan on the Agriland livestream at the National Ploughing Championships today (Wednesday, September 21).
MACC
Day two of the Agriland livestream covering the Ploughing 2022 focused on sustainability within the agricultural sector as it moves to meet emissions reduction targets.
Joining the livestream, Dr. Patton spoke about the Teagasc marginal abatement cost curve (MACC): “The MACC has been a very useful tool to outline the technologies needed up to this point.
“It is important that farmers and the industry don’t wait around for the new technologies that are being researched now in order to implement what we know already.”
The MACC curve has a total of 14 cost-beneficial, cost-neutral and cost-effective mitigation measures to reduce agricultural emissions, including methane and nitrous oxide, the authority says.
These measures are estimated to reduce emissions by 1.85MT of carbon dioxide equivalent per year between 2021 and 2030, if implemented.
The largest contributors to the abatement are using protected urea, improving the dairy economic breeding index (EBI), and using low-emission slurry spreading (LESS).
Emissions reduction
Dr. Patton said that it is often tempting to wait and see what is coming next, but that there are a lot of things that farmers should be doing now.
He said: “Farmers will have heard them all, such as fertiliser type, clover and more.
“Where do we go after, that is the big question. There is a huge amount of work ongoing in Teagasc and it’s complementing work that is being done internationally.
“Around the soil carbon question, the genetic question for beef and dairy, people also speak a lot about additives – hoping almost for a silver bullet.
“There is a big challenge out there. For the moment what we are saying is there is a lot of work ongoing. However, we need a bit of time and patience around that.”
Summing up, Dr. Patton said: “But don’t neglect what we have already available to us.”