Concerns have been raised that the Nature Restoration Law (NRL), which will face a crunch vote in the European Parliament this week, could see Irish beef and other products from so-called ‘degraded ecosystems’ displaced from international markets.
This is because of ‘mirror measures’, which are mechanisms in the wider European Green Deal which aim to ensure products produced in the EU, and produced outside the EU but imported in, are produced to the same standard.
But, the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association (INHFA) is concerned that beef produced on drained agricultural peatland in Ireland – which, under the NRL, would be defined as a degraded ecosystem – could be treated the same as beef produced on, e.g., deforested land in South America.
The farm organisation – a majority of whose members predominately work on land that will be most affected by the law – has expressed fears that this could cause reputational damage to Irish beef, which beef exporters in other countries could take advantage of.
The Nature Restoration Law is set to be voted on by a plenary (full) session of the European Parliament tomorrow (Tuesday, February 27). This vote will be on a compromise position that was agreed between the parliament and the Council of the EU in November.
If MEPs vote in favour of the Nature Restoration Law, its final hurdle will be its adoption by the council, which is understood to be scheduled for the middle of March.
This agreed position, if adopted, would set targets to restore 30% of drained peatlands under agricultural use by 2030, 40% by 2040, and 50% by 2050.
The INHFA is calling on all Irish MEPs to vote down the NRL when it comes before them tomorrow.
According to Joe Condon, a farmer who works for the INHFA in a policy analysis role, the NRL could potentially see Ireland “partitioned by soil type”.
“There is the proposal in the EU Green Deal that they would have those mirror measures. In other words, if an area was deforested in Brazil or someplace, there is a list of products – and beef is one of them – that wouldn’t be allowed on to the EU market if it couldn’t be verified that it didn’t come off one of those places,” Condon told Agriland.
He added: “The EU is saying it will have mirror measures that will set standards in Europe and the standards will have to be met by the [products] coming in, but there is also a possibility that these would also be internal in Europe. It’s called a level playing field.”
Depending on how those rules are interpreted, Condon said, they may be used to displace products from Ireland, or cause reputational damage to them.
“Food companies have targeted food companies on quality [and] products have been displaced off the market. It’s not a citizen on the ground that finds fault, it’s usually another company, and it has been done on many occasions.”
Condon suggested that food companies may use the definitions under the NRL relating to degraded ecosystems to gain a commercial and competitive advantage.
A separate issue the INHFA has drawn attention to is recent scientific work on grazing that the NRL has not taken account of.
Condon pointed to research indicating that carbon sequestration from grasslands can be improved through adaptive multi-paddock grazing – which uses high-stocking rates but short-duration rotational grazing – when compared to conventional grazing.
He believes that implementing such grazing practices can match the climate advantages that the NRL is aiming to achieve. Doing so, he said, would be “win-win” for Ireland.
“We believe this is a win-win scenario for Ireland, in the reputation for beef and lamb…on the global market place, and it [would] give hill farmers the opportunity to contribute to climate, and biodiversity, while enhancing food security, and these are all key objectives of the Nature Restoration Law,” Condon said.
However, he said that the NRL lacks a provision that would allow recent scientific work like this to be considered.
“There is science there now to give an opportunity to continue producing on these areas, delivering for the climate, biodiversity, and enhancing food security,” he said.
He is calling for a legal backstop to be introduced, either in the text of the law or though some other method, that would “give protection to Ireland [so] you wouldn’t have to set a standard that would call the land a degraded ecosystem right from the off”.
Condon compared the NRL requirements to the NCT system for cars.
“There would be an NCT for mineral soils, and it’s quite easy to pass it. Someone takes a look at your car out front and says that’s fine, that looks perfect. It’s a very easily passable NCT. [But] for drained peat soils under agricultural use, to pass that NCT, they would need to meet targets and obligations.
“We’re saying that if there was a backstop there that those areas could also have an opportunity, through grazing, to deliver the same climate, biodiversity and food security results, without having to change the drainage, change the water table, or rewet it, it could pass that NCT a lot earlier than the rewetting stage,” he said.
According to Condon, allowing an opportunity to implement these grazing changes, without defining the land as degraded in the first instance, would “not partition Ireland on soil type, and [would allow] beef coming off every spoil type in Ireland to come off it with the same quality assurance standard, with no question mark over it”.
Commenting on the vote tomorrow, INHFA president Vincent Roddy called on MEPs to reject the NRL.
“It is going to be quite damaging for farming, but not just farming, but for many parts of rural Ireland as well, and I think that is something that has to be properly recognised,” Roddy said.
He added: “Definitely for farmers that are operating on peat soils, be that lowland drained peat soils or on hills, we are going to see massive change forced by this law, and that change could force land abandonment, it could force people out of farming.
“While we may not see an immediate impact, we have to look at what happened with the [Natura 2000] land designations, and how, over a number of years, they started to impact, and they are having a massive impact now, and I would say this law is multiplies of what we see with the land designations,” the INHFA president commented.