By John McHugh, dairy farmer, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
Increasingly we witness agricultural leaders antagonistically pitted against environmental leaders, taunting each other over their detachment from reality. Solutions will only emerge when they listen to each other and start working together.
We live in an age of materialistic science; one where most have an agenda and can produce research and evidence to back up their assertions. For every study that claims organic food is healthier, another will show the opposite.
Unfortunately science, in its current form, can no longer be viewed as sacred; the word of a scientist is no longer treated as ‘gospel’. Each individual now has to use his or her own intelligence and common sense if he or she is, in fact, interested in finding the truth.
The truth can only be found if we can firstly break free from any bias, which is admittedly difficult – especially if you have invested €500,000 on developing your farm to stock it at four livestock units per hectare or if you have spent €150,000 on a ‘no-till’ seeder that relies on glyphosate to work. For those that do break free, the truth starts to scream at them!
A new, real ‘green revolution’ has already begun in agriculture, to replace the chemical revolution that unfolded over the past hundred years. This system strives to work in harmony with nature, rather than attempting to dominate it. The ‘blinkers’ of the chemical revolution must be replaced with a holistic vision.
Sustainability cannot simply be measured by carbon efficiency per unit of food or per euro of output, but has to take account of water, air and soil health – along with food quality and quantity, biodiversity and, just as importantly, farmers’ incomes. Compromises cannot be made on any of these parameters.
The Irish dairy industry’s top brands currently trade strongly on a ‘green’, sustainable image. What is the future for these brands? Increasing numbers of customers now realise that their products come from cows that predominantly graze on near mono-cultures of nitrate-fed grass, balanced with synthetic minerals and, in some cases, genetically-modified feed from half-way around the world.
So, unfortunately, the reality doesn’t sound very green and sustainable. For example, the gluten content of wheat has risen ten-fold during the past 100 years. This has coincided with the practice of continuously selecting wheat, on the basis of its yield response to artificial nitrogen.
The same approach can be witnessed in our dairy industry, where we largely ignore A2A2 milk and, also, the fact that allergies to dairy products are increasing at an alarming rate.
Our farmers are being blindly led by a greedy industry with no vision for anything other than cheap commodities. If we continue down this path, we can only look forward to another 50% of our farmers being cast aside as ‘non-viable‘, while many of the remainder are lured into increasing debt in an effort to keep up.
Will the required ‘vision’ come from our independent research agency Teagasc? Alas, its foundations were laid with those of the chemical revolution and commodity agriculture. The next time you look at a Teagasc zero-nitrogen trial plot or a zero-fungicide control plot, ask yourself what does it tell us?
An understanding of ‘healthy’ soil exists, but is unfortunately not front and centre in Teagasc research I’ve seen.
As farmers, we can stubbornly dig our heels in, disregard everything that is inconvenient for us and take solace from the vast amounts of studies that will undoubtedly tell us that if we keep doing what we have been doing for the past 100 years – only more ‘efficiently’ – everything will be OK.
Or we can start thinking for ourselves and join the revolution.