The Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan, has said that farming “has to change” in Ireland because there has been “a loss of nature in the last 50 years that has to be reversed”.
“We’ve gone from having 500 pristine water systems down to 20. That has to change, it’s not just farming, we have to change how we do forestry.
“We have to change how we manage the rivers, we have to change how we manage our sewage systems, wastewater systems – so it’s not just farming, but it needs to change,” Minister Ryan told Agriland.
On the day (Wednesday, July 12) that MEPs voted to pass a revised EU Nature Restoration Law at the European Parliament, Minister Ryan told Agriland that farming is “a key bedrock of rural Ireland”.
But he also warned there is a need to “realise” that there are environmental constraints, which he said, can be addressed in a way that “gives us a good future in Irish farming”.
“Burying our head in the sand and pretending there isn’t a problem is not serving Irish agriculture,” he said.
According to Minister Ryan, farming also has to change because Ireland needs a “new young generation of people to go into farming and that’s not happening in the numbers that we want at the moment”.
“The average age of Irish farmers is up to 57 and yes, for certain sectors it’s very much a viable, commercial, well-paid enterprise.
“But for the vast majority it isn’t, and I think for that reason it needs to change too,” Minister Ryan added.
‘Farmers are not the enemy’ – Ryan
In the latest interview in Agriland’s On the Record series, Minister Ryan stressed that farmers are not the enemy when it comes to the environment – instead he said that the “restoration of nature is going to require first and foremost that farmers do a lot of the work in heavy lifting”.
“They have a love of their natural environment and their own fields and farm and community and parish and county like everyone else, so I don’t think it’ll work if we put the blame on people, shame on people, that’s not gonna change anything.
“This is a shared opportunity for us all to rise to the occasion, particularly people in rural areas, particularly people in farming, because they know best how we can do this.
“They know their own land and it’s that skill and expertise that we need to call on now and need to pay them for it – so farmers far from being the culprits, are going to be the heroes in the solution,” Minister Ryan said.
He also told Agriland that he believes there is an “obsession” around a “magical number” when it come to the national herd and that the discussion has been framed in a way that it is all about a cull – which is not how he views it.
Minister Ryan said: “There will be a reduction in numbers, it’s as sure as night follows day, because well firstly, the income from the existing model, particularly in beef, suckler, sheep and others, isn’t there and therefore there’s likely to be a natural reduction – we don’t see people replacing the farmers who are there at the moment.
“There will also, in the dairy sector, be a need to reassess the numbers because what the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) says is correct.”