An environmental scientist has claimed that lobby groups are “blocking” farmers who want to transition away from current farming practices for the “the sake of profit”.
Ireland’s link to animal agriculture needs to be “questioned”, according to environmental scientist and former biodiversity officer at Wicklow County Council, Dr. Laura Kehoe.
Dr. Kehoe said that one analysis of lobbying subsidies and legislation in the EU showed that livestock farmers received 1,200 times more public funding than plant-based groups.
The scientist was speaking at a Policy Forum for Ireland seminar on biodiversity loss, as well as the general secretary of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA), Eddie Punch.
“Realigning subsidies for things that are actually increasing biodiversity, regenerating the land is absolutely essential,” the environmental scientist told the conference.
“In Ireland we are very linked to animal agriculture but we need to question that in this day and age, both from a biodiversity standpoint and a food sovereignty standpoint.
“We are no longer growing enough food to supply a nutritious diet. I don’t want to blame farmers for this, this is the system that we inherited and it is the subsidies that exist,” she said.
“We need to think about transitioning to growing nutritious plant-based food in agro-ecological schemes,” Dr. Kehoe, who believes that a referendum on the rights of nature is needed, said.
‘Remotely connected to reality’
Punch said most people recognise the need to try farm more sustainably, but also that the job of food production is “far more complex” than a lot of the narrative around this allows for.
He added that the idea of waving a magic wand and transition farms from generations of livestock farming to plant-based farming is not “remotely connected to the reality”.
Neither does it consider the demand for food or what people are eating globally, he said adding that there is “massive” global demand for Irish beef, dairy and lamb.
This is not going to change any time soon, he said, stressing that getting the balance right between food production and biodiversity and climate is the only “sensible way” forward.
Addressing the points made by Punch, Dr. Kehoe said: “What we have here is, we have environmental scientists, we have professors and people with over a decade of actual expertise in this field.
“And then we have somebody who is a spokesperson for a group of people that earn money from a practice, and I think this is what causes these blockages in transformational change.
“Because we constantly get looped into these narratives of ‘oh no it’s okay, we just need to fiddle around the edges and it will be okay’ vs. the scientists who are literally pulling their hair out at this point.”
“Because of the influence of lobby of profit, of capital in the destruction of the earth’s biosphere,” the environmental scientist told the conference and went on to say:
“Farmers often want to transition but they do not have the knowledge or the expertise to do so, and they are being blocked by lobby groups that want to keep things the same for the sake of profit.”
Animal agriculture and biodiversity
The “most destructive” industry on earth, in terms of land use and pollution is animal agriculture, she said stressing that land use and overfishing need to be discussed in Ireland.
Dr. Kehoe stressed the “extreme severity” of biodiversity loss, saying that it is a scientific fact that the crisis is “threatening the fabric of civilisation”.
There is a “narrative” that the herd has grown exponentially but, Punch said, since Ireland joined the EU in 1973 the herd has been stable at around seven million head.
He added that the vast majority of farmers beat the required threshold of 4% of land dedicated to biodiversity and landscape protection and exceeded 10% for Space for Nature.
“We have 689,000km of hedgerows in Ireland put in place by generation after generation of Irish farmers. Yes, the quality of those has to be addressed, but we have a starting point,” he added.
Farmers already embrace measures such as multi species swards and soil testing, he said. “If we want farmers to do more and more on the green agenda, funding has to be in place to make that happen.
“It is not satisfactory to say that we will take money off you that was designed to help you produce food cheaply and then give it back to you with lots of string attached,” Punch said.