The government’s latest Climate Action Plan could take “8% of land out of grass” and put pressure on farmers to keep production going, the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) stated at the body’s annual general meeting (AGM) today (Tuesday, January 24).
But Tim Cullinan said farmers would continue to focus on “emissions, and their reductions” and play their part in “meeting the climate challenge”.
He told the IFA AGM in Dublin that the ceiling for emissions for the agriculture sector in 2030 was 25% below where its emissions had been in 2018.
“To the naysayers, the doubters, and the sceptics, I want to make it very clear: If we get the right supports and fair measurement, agriculture will reach its target,” Cullinan said.
“I am convinced that we can get there, possibly ahead of other sectors.
“We need a comprehensive plan agreed with farmers. We cannot have a plan based solely on Green Party thinking,” the IFA chair said to a round of applause from IFA members.
He said farmers were focused firmly on “doing what we do best – producing food” all while meeting the climate challenge.
But Cullinan also sounded a warning that it would be wrong for the country as a whole to “blindly pursue environmental policies without proper impact assessments”.
“We cannot support policies that will hit our incomes or the rural economy and that fail to strike the right balance across the three pillars of sustainability,” he added.
He urged the government to develop a plan for “the sustainable growth of all our sectors” and “stop talking them down”.
The IFA president pledged that the organisation would work in the months ahead to ensure that food production could be combined “with meeting the climate challenge”.
Cullinan stressed at the AGM that Irish farmers “produce nutritious food that the world wants”.
“Last year over €16 billion worth of farming exports left this island, to 180 markets around the world. That food nourished millions and sustained our own rural communities.
“We might not be as high-profile as Google, Twitter or others in the tech and pharma sectors. However, their profits are largely re-patriated to other countries.
“The returns from our sector support people in places like Knockmore, Knockraha, Knocktopher and Knocknagoshel,” he added.
The IFA president said the agri-food sector was the “economic bedrock of the rural economy” but it was not getting “due credit for the contribution” it makes.