Ireland’s response to climate change, sustainability, and our future role in helping to feed the world must be viewed through the prism of how we best manage and utilise grazed grass and silage.
Unfortunately, this is a story that we have not yet started to tell in any meaningful way.
Had we been at our game, up to this point, I feel that the anti-ruminant rhetoric emanating from so-called ‘think tanks’ around the world would not have gained the traction that it has.
A climate perfect for grass
The fundamental fact is this: Ireland’s soil types and climate are perfectly suited to the growing of grass.
This fact alone must drive every policy decision taken by each and every stakeholder operating within Irish agriculture.
I totally buy into the thinking behind the proposed Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) for Irish Grass Fed Beef. But the PGI must go well beyond the feel-good factor that it will engender, where our beef is concerned.
Rather, it must be used to ram home the fact that grass-based production systems can be used to secure more than significant levels of performance levels from beef cattle.
Scientists who point to the ‘methane-producing’ weaknesses associated with ruminant livestock do not – it seems – take the consumer-friendly images of cattle and sheep grazing contentedly into account when they do their number crunching.
They are interested in performance-related data, which makes me think that they have not been made aware of the tremendous resource that grass represents in an Irish context.
Grazed grass – feed efficiency
Irish farmers have access to the world’s most efficient feed for ruminant livestock. And it comes in the shape of grazed grass.
But the even better news is that there is so much more that our farmers can achieve by managing this resource more efficiently.
The difference between the grass output that can be produced across this island and the utilisation levels achieved by even our best grassland exponents remain more than significant.
Adding to Ireland’s ‘green credentials’ is the fact that all of this output is being secured exclusively by a rain-fed farming industry.
Contrast this with New Zealand where increasing amounts of the milk, beef and lamb they produce is coming from farms that depend heavily on irrigation to drive their pasture-based systems.
Good-news stories
This autumn will see two key international opportunities for Irish agriculture to really profile the good news stories that are so associated with grassland farming in this part of the world.
The first is the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, taking place in Glasgow. The second is the first-ever United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit, taking place in New York in September.
It would be remiss of organisations like Bord Bia not to put Ireland’s best foot forward at both of these important gatherings.