A coordinated national agriculture strategy is needed to transform Ireland’s food system to reduce methane emissions and achieve food sovereignty, according to a new position paper to be launched this week by Talamh Beo.

The position paper was developed by the Irish grassroots sustainable farming organisation as part of its role in the Methane Matters Coalition, a consortium of 17 European non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working across the energy, agriculture, and waste sectors to secure significant reductions in methane emissions by 2030.

Recommendations

The document sets out a series of recommendations for Ireland’s policymakers to help protect biodiversity and meet targeted reductions in methane and other greenhouse emissions across Irish farming systems while enabling a just transition for farmers.

Recommendations include moving away from export-focused beef and dairy production, reducing herd numbers, promoting sustainable farming practices, encouraging innovations in farm-scale anaerobic digestion, and installing onsite solar and wind energy infrastructure.

Other key recommendations include:

The development of a strategy to help small-scale farmers diversify their agricultural outputs and reduce concentrations of monocultural beef and dairy farms;
Switch from top-down approach to policymaking at a national and EU level to a focus on the grassroots with the establishment of an agroecological farmers’ forum to help those who practice sustainable farming to engage with government and facilitate transition from industrial farming;
Create and implement a Food Systems Transformation education and research framework to highlight the benefits of agroecological farming practices among farmers, consumers, and policymakers;
Develop a ‘Hearts, Hands, and Pockets’ agricultural policy approach that incentivises farmers to farm sustainably and resets the government’s metrics for success from revenue to ecological and social health.

Achieving these, the report says, will require the transformation of Ireland’s food system - a goal necessary to address multiple environmental, economic, and social challenges that face Irish agriculture while paving the way to food sovereignty.

Methane mitigation

For the project, Talamh Beo engaged 12 farmers across nine counties in Ireland to map their perspectives on environmental policy and governance challenges facing the farming industry.

From this process, the organisation identified solutions for methane mitigation based on sustainable farming practices.

Thomas O’Connor, founding member and director of Talamh Beo, said: "The series of recommendations in Methane Matters represent a transformation of Ireland’s food system and, if implemented, would redress the imbalance of power in Irish agriculture from agribusiness to small-scale farmers and more resilient farming systems.

“Talamh Beo’s ‘Methane Reduction Through Food Systems Transformation’ Position Paper serves as a valuable resource for policymakers as it presents a vision for a systems-based approach favouring a long-term, people-led transition based on agroecological practices.”

The paper will be launched in Buswell’s Hotel on Molesworth Street in Dublin on Wednesday (November 19).