A targeted reduction of fertiliser use and a shift towards protected urea can ease the pressure to significantly cut methane emissions from livestock, according to the chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC), Marie Donnelly.
To achieve the 25% emissions reduction target for agriculture, the Food Vision Dairy Group has recommended to fully replace CAN fertiliser with protected urea by the end of 2025 in grass-based dairy production systems.
The use of protected urea, which has a fivefold saving of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is a very important shift in terms of practice that makes “commercial sense” for farmers, Donnelly said.
The key issue is to look at the balance of costs and rewards for farmers for the practices that they use at the moment. She said: “Yes, commodity prices are high, but input costs are high and increasing at a faster rate.
“So, preserving the margin, the income for farmers, is the key issue and this is an area where the two objectives of income protection and ultimately climate change can work together for the benefit of all actors concerned.”
The CCAC chair was speaking at the RDS climate smart agriculture series in partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Protected urea, certainly up until now, has been no more expensive, Donnelly said, so it is actually a cheaper opportunity with a much better impact on the climate than non-protected urea.
Fertiliser use
While the number one priority in this context is to look at nitrous oxide through the use of fertiliser, farming practices such as low-emission slurry spreading (LESS), multi-species swards, and liming will also assist in reducing emissions.
Nitrous oxide is a particularly potent greenhouse gas with a factor of 28 times that of CO2, according to the CCAC chair.
However, she said the challenge is to raise awareness and roll out the deployment of protected urea on all farms across the country as quickly as possible, which will bring positive results both for farmers and the climate.
Reducing nitrous oxide emissions, the CCAC chair emphasised the “absolute necessity” to consider run offs into rivers, lakes and streams which has been a problem over the last number of years.
While nitrous oxide emissions are of priority for the CCAC chair, the need to reduce methane emissions cannot be neglected. While beef numbers in Ireland are in gradual decline, dairy cow numbers continue to rise.
Dairy cows emit more per capita than beef cows, thus Ireland’s emissions profile for cattle continues to stay high, according to Donnelly.