September 5, 2022

 

Ireland's climate goals could compel farmers to cull cattle

 

 

Irish farmers could be forced to cull cattle to meet climate goals.

 

Greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland's agriculture industry must be reduced by 25% by 2030. This is part of the country's latest Climate Action Plan, which pledges to halve overall carbon emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

 

In Ireland, cattle outnumber people and agriculture accounts for over 37%of CO2emissions. Ireland also has the highest methane emissions per capita of all EU member states, with much of this due to beef production.

 

Calls to reduce emissions are at odds with the government's advice to ramp up dairy farming in 2015 to exploit the end of EU milk quotas. After more than 30 years of being constrained by milk production caps, the policy change led to increased output by Irish dairy farmers, who invested heavily in expansion.

 

But now they are being forced to scale back to meet climate targets.

 

"Many farmers invested and have huge financial commitments… they put significant infrastructure in place," said Pat McCormack, head of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association. "There's a huge challenge for our industry and how we arrive at the reductions without cutting the herd."

 

When the Climate Action Plan was first announced in November 2021, Irish Farmers Association took to the streets in protest. At the time, a report from KPMG on the impact of Ireland's carbon emissions targets predicted that 56,400 agricultural jobs would be lost and the beef farming industry would need to be cut by 22% to reach 2030 goals, which then stood at 30% reduction for the agriculture sector.

 

Although the Irish government has not announced a compulsory cattle cull, McCormack sees it as an inevitable outcome of the climate targets.

 

Various practices are already widespread in Ireland to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture, according to McCormack. These include the use of ruminant feed additives, which encourage more effective feed conversion, low-emission slurry spreading techniques and protected urea, which reduces the ammonia released from fertiliser.

 

Although McCormack acknowledged that more needs to be done to meet climate targets, he described reducing the production of food in Ireland as a "last resort" for the country's growing population.

- Euronews Green