 We'll let some of our audience engage. Leem, you have a question. I have a question for all of the panel, if you please. I'll start off with the chagos man. I'm an ex on Forest Saloon to us, which then turned to chagos. You were saying there and Bobby said there about research in relation to slurry into the ground and drilling it in. That research was done over 30 years ago, and nothing was done since. So talking about now, if you're going to start doing things like that, are you going to wait another 30 years before you move on? I mean, this sort of carry on is not acceptable at all. 30 years later, we were able to talk the first story to go along and inject slurry into the three days later. I was able to put cattle back out in that. But if you spread slurry apart from going up in the air and wasting it, you have to wait three weeks before you can let the cattle out. And another thing, I move on to Bobby L. Or Bobby Houston there about the Mercer thing, kind of hit a nerve there with me. This is in relation to bringing in implanted beef into this country. Well, we don't know that. Well, potentially, it's coming from Brazil and South America. That's the choice of village I'm thinking of. Well, you're also talking about the Mercer, which in fact brings in that kind of thing, beef. In 1986, the Finafa government banned implants in this country. And now we're going to turn around and we're bringing in implanted beef. You know, it doesn't make sense whatsoever. You know, your policies are not corrupt, but they're twisted. Okay, let our panel answer that, Liam. So, Pat, we'll start with you then. Yeah, first of all, the Mercer. First of all, the Mercer deal is obviously, it's going on, as Liam Bobby obviously knows, it's 20 years in the making. And we're now at a stage whereby there is a draft agreement. But that draft agreement will depend on a lot of things. First of all, I personally feel there's an inherent contradiction in the deal. If we're going to bring beef from Brazil and cut down rainforests in Brazil and ship the beef that has produced over there halfway around the world, I think it's not going to do anything for climate change. But the deal is going to be depending on whatever beef has come into this country into Europe. First of all, as Bobby said, there's 270,000 tonne of beef coming from that part of the world already. The proposal is another 100,000 tonne will come in. But it has to meet the same criteria as from an animal welfare point of view as we have here. It has to meet the same traceability conditions as we have here. It just can't be any better beef that may come in. If, for example, as you might be suggesting, there's going to be hormones or whatever else in this beef, it cannot come into this into Europe and will not come into Europe because there has to be a traceability element around that. With regard to the slurry issue, I think we need to move on with the slurry issue rapidly. There is no doubt that the proposal that Frank has mentioned there about putting the slurry into the ground rapidly is the way forward. I personally believe that in the new capital is something to go see at present. There has to be more incentives for farmers now, culture contractors, to purchase the machinery that is required to do that. That is the way forward. Why is it taking so long? That was part of his question. Why is it taking so long? I suppose a lot of farmers already are going down that road. It's probably Frank will have the figures more really developed than I would. But a lot of farmers are going down that road at the moment. I personally feel that that's contractors and a lot of farmers now would use contractors for spreading the slurry because it's obviously quicker and faster and so on and so forth. I think there needs to be, and in the present schemes, contractors can't avail of grand aid. That needs to be changed, in my opinion, to incentivise that. But just going back to a more general point of regard to Frank, I think in fairness to Tagus, they have a road map. We'll put a road map now in place. That can bring farming to the next stage, which is required. It can reach those targets that Frank has made between 10 and 15% reductions by 2030. And we're going to have to have other targets beyond 2030 as well, which are very important. But I think there's a road map in place for the first time in a long time that if everybody buys into, we can achieve that by everybody working together. Again, as Pat O'Keefer said, I think there needs to be a bit of coming together by everybody in this regard, be it the farm organisations, be it Tagus who have the road map in place now at the moment. By everybody working together to achieve a common goal of reducing the emissions by 2030, it can be done by everybody working together. Okay, we'll let Frank briefly answer as well. Look, you're dead right? There was a lot of research done on slurry, you know, back 30, 40 years ago. I remember some of them myself and that old. And I suppose what we did in recent years was quantify the losses of ammonia and greenhouse gases from different slurry methods. And it showed that the ones that got it close to the ground, whether it was injecting or a dribble bar or the trailing shoe, were much better in terms of the amount of losses of greenhouse gases and ammonia. And the reason why farmers didn't, I suppose, adopt it over the years, because there were all the benefits, like you say. You can get out onto grass quicker after putting it on and so on. There's less smell. The reason, I suppose, is that the capital cost of the equipment was quite high. So now it is granted, as you say, it's not granted for contractors, but that's, I suppose, what has happened. And I suppose as a result of the research on the amount of emissions coming from it now, farmers that are availing of a derogation are going to have to use the low emissions slurry spread in the trailing shoe or the dribble bar from mid next year. Oh, CGF, sorry. Can you talk about that? I mean, this research is 30 years old. I thought it'd be so old now that I won't even see it. Okay. Maybe I'd come back to this and give us the benefit of your advice, but I never heard of that. Maybe afterwards, if our panel sticks around, we'll be able to get into some more detail in the audience. Lucy Glenn Denning and James Murphy and this man at the front. So we'll go to Lucy first. Hi. I'm a breastfeeding councillor with Quidute, Irish childbirth trust. So my question is, it's kind of twofold. I believe, I'm not sure whether I've got my fingers absolutely correct, but I hope I have. Next spring, there will be 750,000 calves born in Ireland. These will essentially be waste from the dairy industry. So first of all, do the panellists of any concerns re-animal welfare of these young animals being shipped abroad to be slaughtered for the veal industry? Is it economical? And the second part of the question is, is there a massive contradiction in encouraging Irish women to breastfeed here in this country while we export 5 million tins of formula approximately to China every week? Are we in danger of becoming the Nestle of China, which has been a boycott there since 1978? Okay. Thank you, Lucy. I think we'll go straight to Pat for this one. Two easy ones. Okay. So the calf one first, 750,000 calves. So there's, obviously there's beef herd and there's dairy herd and obviously the calves from the beef herd are for beef production. The calves from the dairy herd are, you know, a proportion going for replacements and the balance going for beef. We do export, you know, the figures are publicly available in terms of the number of calves exported. I think it's 180,000 calves were exported from Ireland last year, you know, under a highly supervised European regime in terms of the standards, in terms of the number of hours and all that. I know, you know, you might not agree with it in terms of, but again, it is regulated and supervised by the Department of Agriculture in terms of calf welfare. From a glambia perspective, we'd be very strict in terms of and likewise other processes in Ireland will be in terms of the standards that farms are required to do by law in terms of calf welfare, in terms of compliance, in terms of tagging all the calves, in terms of the calves not being allowed to move off the farm until they're a certain age and in terms of they're actually fit to leave the farm. There's no doubt, I think there's been a lot of coverage in the agri-media in recent weeks and recent months about this issue because, you know, it's no secret that the industry has grown quite rapidly post-abolition and milk quota in terms of farmers had been restricted until 2015. They've expanded quite rapidly, herds have expanded and farmers are having to adjust now in terms of investing in calf housing in terms of having more space to be able to keep those calves for longer to be able to market them because we do have a seasonal system. So I wouldn't take, you know, we have actually very high standards of animal welfare and our farmers and some of them are here and they can speak for themselves, but they're very proud of calf welfare. We sent a booklet to four and a half thousand farmers in recent days with advice from our vets in terms of how to manage their calves. I'll give you a copy of that booklet and I think we're very proud of the standards that the farmers achieve and if the farmers don't achieve those standards we'll stop collecting their milk. So last year we stopped collecting milk from farmers that weren't achieving the Borbia Estas certification and if under the calf heading, which is part of Estas, if they fail to achieve the calf requirements in terms of the Estas, well they're no longer eligible for milk collection because they're in breach of their, they won't have their Estas certification. All of our milk. How many farmers, just as not of interest? How many farmers which? Did you stop taking their milk from them? It was farmers that hadn't achieved Estas certification. So we have 100% of our milk from farms. It wasn't for calf reasons, it was for just, they hadn't, the Borbia audit is done. You have to get through the Estas process and again, one of the farmers here can talk. And did how many didn't get through it? Like a handful or just roll park? Small number, but they didn't. So 100% of our four and a half thousand farmers now have Estas certification. And if tomorrow someone, I mean there's an ongoing cycle of audits and if somebody falls out of that process, there's a process for actually achieving compliance. So we, I mean, I can, I don't know if I want to name it a public forum. I'm happy to give you a. A small number. A small number. But the Borbia set the bar and these farmers weren't able or willing to meet the standard in terms of what was required. So CABS is part of that. And the second question. Second part of the question. Yeah. Look, I suppose in Ireland we have, so Glanbia does not export informally. It can, we supply ingredients to the sector. And in Ireland, there are some of the large multinationals that produce that, you know, Nestle, Denone and Abbott have facilities in Ireland that export. And we were supplier to that sector in terms of ingredients. There's very strict regulations around that sector in terms of breastfeeding and in terms of advertising. And I think that's really important that that is regulated the way it is in terms of what they can and can't do in terms of encouraging. And I know there's a code. Yeah, and I know there's, yeah, there's issues around it. Yeah, absolutely. But it, so in other words, I suppose. Would you say it's not law? Okay. Yeah, in terms of code. Correct. Yeah. But look, I suppose we supply the sector with ingredients. We're, you know, it's a highly regulated sector in China as well as globally. And I think it's, you know, it's important that breast is first choice. We wouldn't disagree with that advice. But then mothers obviously are entitled to make their own choices after that. And we're not, no, we're not, we don't sell directly. We don't sell any products. We supply ingredients. So we supply lactose. We supply, you know, powders, dried powders far that sector. Okay. We don't sell. Thank you. Great questions. James Murphy, Kilkenny IFA, chairman of the local IFA here. Thanks, Seymour. Just first and foremost, just on your beam observations, Pippa, there's an area there that you may not be aware of. There was a sector of beef finishers that were excluded, dairy farmers, which was absolutely wrong. Now, if they, if dairy farmers who finished their own animals, who were involved in finishing of beef, had to be allowed to join beam, the 22 million would have been all allocated and would have been all taken up. And IFA is still calling for that issue to be addressed. And again, look, we spoke earlier, I have with the greatest respect, I accept the points you make about organics and it has a real role to play. We have 140,000-ish farmers in Ireland. We have 70,000 certified organic farmers. About 50% of them will tell you that they can get a percentage of their product away at organic prices. The risk goes at conventional prices. So it's a market that we'd have to seriously grow. Look, Seymour, I welcome the debate. I think we need more nights like this and society needs more nights like this because this debate, it's new, it's alarming a lot of people and in many cases it's all over the place. And I think we all want to see a common progress on Ireland's challenge to climate change. From my own perspective, I think farmers and agriculture, because of the finger-pointing that we're currently experiencing, have become overly defensive and I think we need to be more open and more receptive to new ideas. I welcome Frank's observations and I think that's central to where we move forward. And I think Chagas has certainly upped its game in that area. I would say, sure, Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions would raise flags. No doubt about that. But they also underline the importance of agriculture to Ireland as an economy and the fact that we don't have heavy industry as most other European countries have to dilute their agricultural emissions. And that's not dodging any. We have a responsibility in agriculture. Farmers are well prepared to accept that and to start dealing with it. But the debate has got to be driven by fact and by common sense and not by environment and climate change alarmism. And I'm a little worried about some of the commentary that we're seeing. I'll just make a further quick point before I ask my question. Frank... Welcome to the panel tonight, James. Again, it's relevant. Some of the panel made the point that we have a duty to feed the world and we're now seeing that food production needs to increase by 50% by 2050 to feed the world. We're very good at producing top quality food here in Ireland. We have a climate that suits. We have highly skilled farmers. If we're forced to scale back production, other countries, and Pat alluded to this, other countries that are not producing to the same sustainably high standard as we're currently producing to and aspire to, will step into the breach. And I'm not sure that will benefit. And the question I see regularly in my travels around Europe, and again Pat O'Keeffe alluded to the progress that Land B are making, other countries, almost every other country in Europe has put schemes in place. The government has put schemes in place to allow farmers and to facilitate farmers to get involved in mitigation actions, whether that's renewable energy, whether that's the bioeconomy, whether that's new alternatives like growing hemp, et cetera. Yes, they've been supported, but they've allowed farmers to diversify and in many cases to actually move away from livestock production. What would the panel think? Why have we foot dragged for so long? Why have successive governments foot dragged in this area? Really, James, who would you like to answer your question? I just wanted to actually... I'm going to pass the question over to the government TD here. But I was just going to address exactly any... but I was going to just address that whole narrative about us feeding the world and, yeah, we're fantastic. We produce enough food for 50 million people, but we can't actually feed ourselves. You know, we're net importers of food. That's a big issue. You know, we need to be a bit more self-sufficient in how we... what we grow and what we produce and what we eat ourselves. You know, there's no point really feeding 50 million people if we're going to be struggling, if climate crisis gets worse or if we're isolated ourselves. So I think that's important to consider to keep that in mind. Frank is shaking his head here. Yeah, yeah, we're... somewhere you're right and somewhere you're wrong. Like, we produce enough milk and beef to feed about 50 million people, but obviously then we import a lot of food. It's enough to feed... I did the calculation while you were... I can't remember the exact answer, but, you know, somewhere maybe 13 to 15 million people. So we're not net importers of food. We produce... We're net importers of calories or energy of food, I think. No, we're not. We're net exporters of calories and protein. Well, we're net importers of something because we don't grow enough of a whole pile of things. We're certainly... we're importers of fruit. We're huge importers of things like prepared consumer food, which is your jams, your B-series, your breakfast series, all those kinds of things. Well, we're net importers of potatoes. Carrots, apples, onions... Yeah, but when you put the whole basket together... But there's potential for... I'm not saying for beef farmers to diversify into growing carrots, but there's farmers out there who don't all want to produce all beef, they don't all want to come out of college and borrow a whackload of money to become a dairy farmer. They want other options, and we're not providing... But we need to be careful on that one because that one gets put around a lot of... it's a little... I grow my own vegetables, but it's not ever going to be viable for me to start supplying the local, you know, market with vegetables. Because there are vegetable growers who it is viable, and they're employing... they're employing like maybe 10 people on a spotless electric capacity. Yeah, absolutely. But there's oiverc, keelings, country crescent, they're brilliant at what they do, but it's not going to be for everyone in terms of 80,000 beef farmers switching to vegetables. We need to be realistic. It's not fair to farmers, we're telling them, you know... I'm not telling, I'm saying it's an option, and I specifically said not necessarily for beef farmers, but for other farmers out there. But consumers... I mean, the IFA have a horticultural chair. He's representing a certain number of farmers who are probably struggling a lot because there's no supports there. And below-cost selling is huge issues for them and the power of the retail chance. There's a huge amount of issues, but again, when farmers are being told, and not accusing you people of telling them, but people on the radio or on the television saying, you know, farmers need to diversify, but farmers... they're living from it. It's very unfair to be telling them you should earn their living in a different way. If they've chosen beef as what they want to make a living out of beef. We just need to be careful in terms of being realistic about what's like the people that are in vegetable. They're a very small number. They're highly professional. They're highly skilled because the consumer expects clean. They expect fresh. And yes, farmers' markets are brilliant, but it's not for everyone. Back to getting James an answer for his question, and you'll have to forgive me, James. You'll have to remind us briefly of your question. Pat Deering. Yeah, I'll answer James' question in a second. I think the first point I'd like to make is just a brief point. There's only one group of people going to produce food, and there are farmers. Nobody else is going to produce food, and in Ireland we do it very well and farmers do it very, very well. We're the most efficient dairy producers in Europe, and I think everybody will agree with that. We're the fifth most efficient producers of beef in Europe. I think nobody would disagree with that. And at that point it has to be made and it has to be forgotten about as well. We're very well in Ireland, and we're very proud of what we do, and we're very, very, very proud of it. Answering James' question. I think the next round of cap, which is presently negotiated, is going to be crucial to how we do things. There is going to be a massive change in the whole process and the structure, which is very important. In the past, it's called a common agricultural policy for a reason, because it's supposed to be the same policy for every country in Europe. When we joined Europe in 1973, there was a very small number of countries in Europe compared to where we are at the moment. There were mainly countries like ourselves, like Britain, France, Germany. Europe has diversified and changed in the last number of years. We have a lot of countries from Eastern Europe who have joined Europe, who have a totally different concept of farming and have totally different names and aspirations and totally different targets in their own way. The common agricultural policy of 1973 and in more recent years is totally different from now. Hence, the idea has been changed completely whereby there's going to be maximum flexibility for our country to do things that we need to be able to do to facilitate the problems that we have, be it from a climate change point of view. We can develop our own plans to suit the farmers of Ireland, not the farmers of Romania or wherever else. There was a concentration process as well announced in the last number of days by the Department of the Minister with regard to the climate change agenda. Every sector has a target to reach as frankly as the libertarian are on. It's very important that everybody and every farmer organization, every farmer and every stakeholder is brought along that journey together. That's where the concentration process was announced. It is open for the next number of weeks. It is important everybody feeds into that process so that when the concentration process is finished and when a decision is made, everybody will have had their fair say into that process so that everybody will know where they're going together. That's a single part of it, but when the cap is coming forward again, I think the cap is the crucial thing so that we can have a common goal going forward that is going to suit Ireland and Irish farmers. The IFA are obviously very worried about the cap and the proposed 5% cut. Absolutely. Every farmer organization, every farmer would be very concerned about that. This is based on, as we all know, the fact that our nearest neighbours, who are going to be a net contributor to that budget, are going to be leaving. As are we. We're a net contributor to the cap. We don't put in 11 billion euro every year. We want to be doing taxpayers money. We're getting back. The 4 billion came directly from Britain. We want to be free from their answers because we'd like to get some more questions in. Sorry, Frank, just to finish off on James' question. I just want to support Pippa on the diversification option. I think it is a shame that we import so many potatoes into this country. It's a part of our culture. It's a surprise to me tonight, actually. Look, we've made... We, Chagos and the industry, have made good inroads in the last couple of years into the salad predator. We've got growers in Ireland growing the little salad predator by... We're now working on the chip and predator. It's difficult, though, because the scale of the chip producers in the UK and in Holland is huge compared to us. So economies of scale make that different, but we're working on it. Just in relation to bioenergy, we've seen crops produced for bioenergy in the market really wasn't developed, so they haven't gone well. The anaerobic digestion is now... There's a lot of talk about it, and Gas Networks Ireland have proposals to produce 20% of their gas from renewable sources. The problem, though, is if you're going to do that from grass and slurry, it's really challenging to meet the sustainability standards for that, because what it means is for every unit of energy you produce out of it, of renewable energy by a methane, in other words, you can only use 0.3 of a unit of energy to produce it. So if you start using nitrogen fertilizer to grow your grass, it's very difficult to meet those standards. So they're not simple questions, I suppose, and we need to be very clear before we... that we're not going to put ourselves into a cul-de-sac. OK, we had a question at the front as well. Good evening, panel. I'm the chairman of the Irish Shirley Cattle Society, and I'm from the west of Ireland. My first questions, I suppose, are for Pat Deering. It's recently printed that the agri-sector is responsible for 30% of our carbon footprint nationally. It seems to me that the only target that is on reducing that is reducing that overall by 10% to 15%, but the sole target is the suckler sector. Now, as a Shirley Breeder, and there's 2,500 of us, our sole customer base is the suckler sector, like many other beef breeds. And those beef breeds have become the backbone of a beef industry that has kept this country afloat when everything else was on its knees, including milk. And it's not about a suckler versus dairy or a beef versus dairy, because both have coexisted here for generations and should continue to do so, and please God they will. But it's not that many years ago since milk was on its knees in Ireland, and many people suffered. Beef is in that point at the moment. There's people losing their homes, their farms, et cetera, as a result. Now, why Pat, if overall the agri-sector is responsible for 30%, why is it every week, be it in the independent of the journal or agri-land or every other form of social media, the only section of that we see targeted is the suckler sector? Because I have to agree with I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Pippa. You said that if the schemes were viable, they would be oversubscribed, not an undersubscribed. The BDGP scheme, while we're being told it's on paper a success, there was a 33% exodus from the original uptake of that. The beam scheme is undersubscribed. If they're fit for a purpose, if the schemes you're putting forward are fit for purpose and viable and are economically plausible for the people, for the farmers, they would be oversubscribed. Okay, so your question is why are the suckler sector the underclass of the agri-sector? Secondly, Chagas have promoted the exponential unbridled growth in the dairy sector. The lady in the audience here asked the question, what is the plan for the 750,000 calves that are to be born next spring? I don't believe that lady got an answer. And I think it's something that needs to be addressed because we're watching our beef sector go down the swanee and it's a real possibility if there becomes an animal welfare issue as a result of this the head of your Chagas dairy research project has admitted that they overlooked the calves coming off the expansion as a result of the dairy herd. Now that to me is a criminal statement. Okay, what is the plan? We'll let Frank respond to that first and then we'll bring Pat in for the other question you had. Well, certainly in our plan around our thinking and around the climate issue it is not certainly targeting the suckler sector. The measures that we have in there would actually primarily be adopted on irrigation farms, dairy farms. So the slurry spreading methodology, the protected urea measures, they're equally applicable to beef but you know they're certainly not targeting suckler and as I said earlier it's our contention that we can reach the targets in the government's climate action plan without the need to cut the herd. So, yeah, and that's individual farmers making a choice that they want to switch into dairy primarily. Clear, the profitability of dairy is far higher. So that's the reality of it. Stabilized beef farmers incomes. Yeah, well look, the bit we can do about it is the technical efficiency part and you know try to get the system as optimized as possible. At the current price of beef, dairy beef or suckler beef is really challenged and it's not a dairy beef, I agree with you it shouldn't be, this issue shouldn't be portrayed as a dairy beef or suckler beef issue. No calf that's born next spring if the price is 350 is going to have an easy ride through life to make profit. I know the mayors some of them will and then so on but it's an issue right across the beef industry. What's going to happen to 750,000 calves born next spring? Well, you know I suppose if the market is reasonable they'll be bought if the market isn't reasonable we're going to have a challenge. If that arises the primary thing has to be to ensure that the welfare of calves whether they're with us in this country for four weeks before they might go on a boat whether they're with us on a farm for two weeks before they might have to go for slaughter. Whatever happens to them they have to be looked after properly and we've put a lot of effort in with Animal Health Ireland and with others in terms of the guidance of farmers around welfare the welfare standards of calves no matter what their value is. Okay we're just running out of time I have to let a couple more people in and we can maybe talk afterwards if people are sticking around to this gentleman here. Okay very briefly Pat can you answer? Yeah I suppose I can, yeah I don't want to be kind of evasive about it. First of all I have no control over what's floating in the farmer's journal, Agroland or anywhere else. There is no there is no policy to diminish this brief sector in this country I think both of them have to coexist together it is very important that they do coexist together. The key problem in my opinion is quite simple at the moment beef farmers get 115% of their income from Europe. So they're waiting on the 16th of October every year to get the check in the post or to get the taxes said that the money is in the bank and on the 4th of December they said they got the top up, the 20% or 30% top up. In 1973 when we joined the European Union 80% of the European Commission budget was going towards Agroculture once the new cap is no goes to year ahead in the years time or wherever it is 30% there was a cheap food policy in Europe over many years and in order to have that cheap food policy farmers were paid a subsidy in order to supplement their income and that subsidy has been reducing constantly over the years down to 30% which would be less probably less than 30% in 2020-2021 you might ask the question where has the rest of the 50% gone there are other priority issues like the minimum and the migration or wherever else the fence is once the board and only 30% of the budget has gone towards Agroculture OK Noel OK don't seem too happy with the answers we'll let you in with your question I'll probably answer some of these first as well with a few comments but I'll just go back to the start in terms of tonight what place for sustainable agriculture just to reset and think and what place there's a super place for sustainable agriculture but we can't lose track of what's been set up here all night there's four stools and the biggest one there was talks about diversification and different pieces and potatoes and vegetables there's a reason why so many farmers left those sectors there's a reason why so many farmers are leaving the circular sector and that's to do with the financial piece plain and simple economics and you won't go back there unless the economics change unfortunately and just a comment on the calves I'm a dairy farmer I'll have plenty of calves in the spring yeah but the waste was mentioned earlier they're not waste they're basically a calf again no different than any other calf and they'll eventually end up as a beef animal in some farm shape at some stage on somebody's table somewhere in Europe or in Ireland or in America or wherever it's an issue with selling calves in the spring we'll keep them, we'll rear them until whenever the market allows us to sell them it's a very simple basic thing it might be when we'd like to do it but they'll be looked after and they'll be brought to a certain point and then they'll go and your question? yeah I could make another half dozen comments but we want one simple question and Prick or Frank this is fairly recent so I hope you know in New Zealand they've changed how they look at methane and how they look at the whole cycle and how they're going to actually calculate things and I wonder maybe a few comments on what they're doing and what that means and if it happened here maybe what it would mean right so so it's not just in New Zealand there's other scientific groups around the world saying that the way we currently kind of look at the different greenhouse gases and trying to equate them all is not right you know that they are different so at the moment we say that a kilo of methane is I don't know 26 times or 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide is 300 times and we've these trying to compare apples and oranges the reason that's kind of flawed is carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds and hundreds of years so if you put up carbon dioxide from fossil fuel now or whatever it stays up there for hundreds of years methane has a half-life of about 12 or 13 years so when you put up methane now it's gone in 12 or 13 years that methane obviously there's more methane coming along behind it so because of that difference in the time that they stay in the atmosphere these scientists and lots of scientific groups say if we want to bring the world to kind of net neutral greenhouse gas emissions what we've got to do is stabilize methane emissions which would mean not having them grow anymore and in fact cutting them a bit maybe by in New Zealand they're saying 10 to 20% or something we've got to bring carbon dioxide down to zero either we'll never bring it down to zero but we've got to suck as much back out of the atmosphere as we're putting up and nitrous oxide we've got to bring it down to zero so what would it all mean? it would mean that in New Zealand they're proposing that they're saying maybe something like 10 or 20% reduction and then a different target for their carbon dioxide it's probably not going to be relevant at all here for at least the next decade the rules are set in terms of the Paris Agreement the targets are set the EU has signed up to it Ireland has signed up to it we've got the current system in place until 2030 and even at that stage this is politics and science mixing it's not going to suit New Zealand or Ireland we might think it's advantageous but for other countries then we'll maybe argue against that question? this lady in the front and we have somebody in the back as well hello, just to adjust what you were just saying and the research in New Zealand it seems that research here tends to be 20 years behind we're now doing multi-species swords in New Zealand methane problem well there's the microbes in the soil when you don't fertilize with artificial fertilizer that eats methane so if you have a multi-species sword you don't need to use their nitrogen or your urea or any of those kind of things you have the sequestration in a multi-species sword with the root depths which also brings up the minerals you don't have to dose your animals so much you have your dung beetles involved which eats your eggs from your worm burden eats your fly eggs as well there's all these other kind of things this is nothing to do with organics this is to do with soil health fertility and getting the microbial life going which essentially a lot of what the farming is happening here in Ireland not doing sequestering carbon you need the root depth ryegrass is very shallow that is not happening unless you have the root depth of a variety of different species unless you have the tannins and the variety of species in the grass sword you don't have the inputs then of your fertilizers so your price of how much it's going to cost you to grow your sword for your dairy herd is a lot less you've sown it, seeded it and you start grazing it with a longer window in the rotation so that it has time to recover and your cattle can stay out longer in this this is all my question is that why doesn't Ireland catch up with a lot of this research that is going on which also proves that methane is consumed by healthy soil that carbon is consumed by healthy soil and healthy plant life your research that is happening in Chogos is very narrow, it is not fulfilling the grass rotation and giving the multi-species sword enough space to regroup are we really behind the rest of the world are we behind New Zealand there's some fantastic researchers in New Zealand in case you get a shock thanks James health and safety all of us look there are some fantastic researchers in New Zealand fantastic researchers in Ireland and some of them in Chogos and others in the universities and I often actually hear New Zealand colleagues say that Ireland has the best agricultural research system in the world so anyway, we can all kind of blow our own trumpfer or whatever we certainly have been looking at soil carbon and actually we published some research there recently that showed the amount of carbon in our mineral soils now not our bogs or our peatlands the amount of carbon in our mineral soils is the equivalent of 30 years from the whole of Ireland we emit about 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year into the atmosphere we're storing 30 times that amount in our mineral soils of course it's in ryegrass swords where do you think it is ryegrass swords are predominantly ryegrass swords absolutely the point you're making about the multi-species sword that's certainly of relevance and of interest we have been researching multi-species swords in Chogos for at least 10 years University College Dublin has been researching them we're putting in a multi-species sword element into our main okay look we'll take maybe we're a bit slow so we won't go from one species or two species to 25 and one go we'll go to four or six first and see how we get on with that I don't think so we're very well aware of the sile microbiome and we've got researchers very skilled in looking at the sile microbiome and Irish soils by and large have very, very healthy sile microbiomes including the ones that grow predominantly perennial ryegrass swords okay and at the back we'll have a final question my name is O'Neill just first off I think Irish beef is an excellent product I love temporary blue cheese we just want to say that I think the people who suffer most from the climate change is somebody who gets their house flooded because the rivers have overflowed because there's too much rain or people who suffer from storm damage that's the people who will suffer the most I look at this for a panel and to me my simple mind says okay what we should do I mean we're all going to have to do things not just farmers are going to have to do things but one of the things we definitely need to do is to reduce the national hair for sure that's one thing outside of that but we need to just wake up to who is going to compensate the people who are going to suffer from this climate change and we're going to suffer from it in Ireland and people have suffered for instance picket buddies like Inish Teague sorry could you speak up nice and close because some of the panelists are struggling to hear you sorry can you hear me now the people who suffer are the people whose houses have been flooded could you ask your question please my question is why is there no forestry person up on that panel one man over there mentioned forestry we have someone in front of you in the audience Michael Summers if you have a question you might talk to him after this and thanks Michael for joining us and I accept your point though on flooding and all of that it's very real I work in KCLOR so the biggest stories we cover are relating to the impact of weather events so today it's localised floodings south of the county roads farmers contacting us as well so it is a very real issue I said that was the last one but this lady appealed to me very nicely and then Pippa wants to make a point thank you my name is Mary Brennan and I live in an intensively farmed area in North Hill Kenny and what I see around me is an agriculture which you men on the panel claim is the best at producing beef and milk and you seem to think it's the best at research in the world I want to point out to you that it is done so at the cost of decimating our biodiversity there are no wildflowers left on the farms there are no bees insect numbers are massively reduced all over the country our rivers are very polluted salmon populations almost eliminated now I know farmers are not responsible for all of it but intensive farming has been responsible for most and I think you really need to recognize this point and you need to understand that the world population cannot keep growing and you cannot base an economic system on continuing to grow agriculture there are limits to growth and agriculture needs to face up to that and you have to limit your herd sizes and environmental impacts particularly faster wildlife when are you going to understand that there are limits to growth in agriculture without destroying our wildlife Bobby Elward I just want to speak about our forestry that man is right we are only 16% of this country on the forestry the average in Europe is 40% and up to 50% 50% in forestry and unfortunately even the government at the moment has been in new rows in forestry because of objections they won't allow people to sow or to plant they won't allow people to cut the forestry that's there already and there's a bill coming through the door next week just to stop people from objecting the serial object of this country that could be from Dunigal and the objection to a forestry in Kilkenny that has to stop there's plants out there there's forestry out there that's not being allowed to be cut at the moment back to Mary Brennan talking about intensive farming North Kilkenny and the decimation I think a farmer plays his role as a farmer myself we play our role in diversity in that we have to live we trim hedges we keep hedges trimmed every year that's not true we don't need them no no we don't first and foremost we don't even cut a hedge until the time is permitted when all wildlife and wildlife he could be something for doing that he was breaking the law some regulations are there and now he's going to obey the law and I bought a hedge trim on myself we cut it from the 1st of September thanks to Mary sorry Pippa I've sort of forgotten I think we focus this entirely pretty much on emissions we tend to do this when we have these debates we get caught up in one subject area and you alluded to that there's more to it, biodiversity worldwide and in Ireland and in County Kilkenny and in County Offley it's rife and farmers have the best role to play here now I agree there are farmers cutting hedges in July and I have caught them and I have reported them and I will call them out anytime I see it if it's in fields and it shouldn't be done I will do it but we have to nurture the farmers who are willing to do it properly because I mean there's no I'm not telling, this is sort of fact you won't have any berries you won't have flowers for pollinators you won't have berries or fruits for other animals so I mean reps was good in one sense because I think there was a scheme there you had to leave your hedges for five years or a couple of years anyway so you're getting all of this there's a whole lot of things we could be doing to be honest for free as well that's very true and I think look farmers I'll give you an example there's an advisory programme and in the past it was totally focused on profit where's not totally but the vast majority was where's the new programme which has 11 farmers spread across the catchment area and things like biodiversity and sustainability measures are absolutely central to it I mean I take your point in terms of I mentioned at the start of the programme we have in East Cork about the bright project really good and farmers are learning intensive farming and I'm getting queries from people about you know what's the best shelter belts to plant and farmers have always planted shelter belts because they know the value that hedges do in terms of shelter they have more to learn in terms of biodiversity I mean the river programmes like I mentioned at the start about more planting on the banks of the rivers I mean reps got a lot of the rivers fenced off which was great progress but now we've to move beyond that so there's a programme called local it's called it's an advisory programme but basically tackling water quality doing it properly going down along a river and saying testing the water what's the problem is it up along here, is it this farm, is it that farm is it the local village and tackling the problem actually improving I mean I don't take your point that our rivers are decimated we have a very high standard the EPS stats are there there is problems and if there's farmers polluting the rivers we need to tackle them just to add to that I'm the farmers and I have a river in two farms outside farming and all my rivers are fenced off and have been for years on the rivers but that's not my I mean there might be other reasons but all my no animals can go into my rivers and have a lot of work and have done it with years just to say farms are playing their part and the hedge cutting I also planted nearly 1200 in the last two years so don't say we're not playing our part there are about three or four questions in the room but I'm just conscious some people will want to go home so will we talk afterwards or will we take a few more is the panel okay to take some more I just wanted to make it actually forestry I was going to talk about and the forestry model I think on the whole well a lot of people agree it isn't the way it should be in Ireland I mean you go to Leetrim they don't want to see another tree ever again whatever type it is nearly at this stage because it's just obliterated now actually your party Bobby voted in favour of a green party motion there to have a closer to nature forestry model which is all about giving farmers far more opportunities to maybe plant smaller amounts on their farms because at the moment the current model is a big plantation of X number of hectares all in nice rows and it's usually some sort of conifer and it's usually for a clear fell in 30 years time and off you go again whereas I think farmers are reluctant to do that and I can see that we have small amount of forestry on our farm and we tried really hard to try and have a mixed sort of diverse sort of native species and it was really hard the old spruce and it'll fly it there so you know we have spruce against our will almost but that was what we were there's Michael so I agree there's a role for commercial I appreciate that so when you go up and you say that thickest spruce is bad you ask any grower in this part of the world are any peasants what makes the money and what are the prices I'm not disagreeing with that but our forestry model is pretty much 90% of spruce off our forestry cover in Ireland 1% is native 1% of forestry of cover is native there's a reason for that too commercialism has committed and I'm not denying that we don't saw enough trees to keep planting we won't have commercialism because such a spruce you have it you're talking about even you're talking about 20 years you'll grow now but you'll sow now you won't cut it we have to end in another question since our panel are happy to continue Councillor David Fitzgerald he's in the front row here thanks for an interesting discussion what strikes me at the end of this discussion is a lack of sense of urgency I follow this debate like everybody else and you look at the transport sector they're talking about a 10 year plan to radically change transport I was at an energy discussion a similar discussion two weeks ago and they said we will never build another fossil fuel energy plant in this country and we will shut down all the energy plants sooner or later but a significant number including money point will be closed within the next 10 years you look at the construction sector every local government house that's being built is an aerated house and you see that the agricultural sector is not on a 30 year window between now and 2050 but actually on a 10 year window and I'm very disappointed when I hear people talking about spreading technology 30 year old technology where are the new ideas where from an environmental point of view is sustainable but also from all the farmers here because they need leadership and they need ideas and they need answers and I don't hear them coming from you and I'm really disappointed and I think the Irish farmer my question is why aren't you seeing this as urgently as every other sector of the economy because you don't appear to be Thanks David Frank I think that's a little bit unfair because I think agriculture very clearly is seen as having a clear plan to get its emissions reduction in order that's my view we'll have to agree to disagree the plan is what's loosely called the chagos macor it's the suite of emissions that will reduce emissions to allow us to meet the targets in the climate action plan and whether it's old technology or new technology it doesn't matter once it reduces emissions so there are a whole heap of new things that are being researched that will probably come into play in the beyond 2030 phase I bore you to go through them now okay okay the point has been the point has been very well made and it's been hurt I think people would say agriculture has a credible plan in order to meet its targets in the climate action plan people would question the plans for other sectors far more than agriculture agriculture had a plan years ago when other sectors didn't so it's not today or yesterday that we've started working on this so as I said whether they're old or new measures I don't mind if someone else invented them 30 years ago we'll use them now we won't be waiting 30 years for new measures if they're work next year we'll use them next year well I think once you get into the language of enforcing you're kind of losing the battle okay and this is the last question of the night I can promise you you have the best to last Dennis Strand is my name I'm from the Farmer and Ruler Affairs Committee with ICMSA a couple of points I'd like to make an end of a question for the panel for the gentleman down the back that's talking about the method of spread and slurry that's been in evidence for the last 30 years it's been implemented in both Holland and Denmark for the last 30 years and at the moment Holland and Denmark are going back to question that method because every action has reaction sometimes the action is positive sometimes the action is negative and in Holland and Denmark they're finding that because of the size of these machines that have been used for it's absolutely destroying soil structure they're different soils don't start telling me they're different soils every soil in the country here is different so are you going to start picking out that it's suitable in this field and not in that field I mean in general in those two countries they're looking at abandoning it because of the damage that's been done to the soil structure so sometimes it's better to be behind the curve but what are we using we know what we're using because we know what's available in America it's two and a half... stop interrupting the whole time I'll answer your question the machine that's been used in this country is a 150 or 200 Hertzberg tractor pulling a two and a half to 3,000 gallon tanker with a trailing shoe behind it and ask anybody who's tried to get out on anything except perfect land with that machine and they'll tell you it doesn't work okay Dennis your question because I've given you loads of rope now my question is and I'll tie something in the tip is promoting organic production of food I sat on behalf of ICMSA on the organic strategy review group that sat for a full probably 15 to 18 months last year trying to encourage organic growth or the growth of the organic sector section in this country the problem is the price is not there for the final product well I disagree no you can disagree or I won't no when we sat at the end the problem with organics in this country is the two year leading period to get into organics because you're getting producing into an organic standard but you're getting conventional price and the question I'd like to ask the panel is the problem with all this intensification of agriculture is the price to the farmer at the end okay it's not economically viable to do what we've done 30 years ago my father milked a third of the number of cows and I'm a very small farmer my father milked a third of the number of cows 30 years ago but he had a better standard of living because today I'm supplying milk to Pat's company and I'm getting the same price as my father did in 1986 so when we get to the stage the consumer demands he wants better cleaner greener less carbon footprint more sustainable but they still want a bag of carrots for 49 cent okay Pippa we'll let you answer that um yeah I suppose in terms of actually the organic sector I mean farmers are paid for that first two years at a higher rate to sort of get them over that hump as it were well I don't know I would beg to differ and I know organic farmers who would continue on as organic farmers without the subsidy they are that engrossed in it because it works for them and they are getting the returns I mean we're we okay but we let her answer well I as I said for my farm and our example of suckler cows we were actually we are I know but there's very few farmers who actually depend wholly on farming is about third I think is there would there be about that a third of all farmers depend wholly on farming is their income most either have a spouse or a partner who works or they have an off farm no I know but we have to I didn't say why if I said spouse I never said he or she I said a farmer's spouse or partner it was very thank you thank you very much can I just if you don't mind just I can conscious I'm looking around the room I can see some people are tired some of our panel might be happy to stick around so maybe one to one you might be able to grill them you might be able to get some more information I think you were really engaging audience you were really well informed you can now I agree there's a certain amount of leakage I would say from the organic sector there's a lot of say farmers for example who produce calves and will sell them as wheelings and most of them will end up into the conventional sector they don't follow on through now we don't do that we finish ours we made that point that was the only way to make money at it was to finish them and fair enough like during the summer we're getting 450 a kilo for our organic beef which cost us far less to produce then Dennis you can talk to the panel afterwards thank you very much you've been a superb audience if you want to stay on I'm sure you'll get to talk to some of them on their way out the door please give our panel a very big round of applause thank you thank you to our organisers tonight as well somebody said before we got started just think it was you Pat about Brexit and the lack of information at the time so it's great that we're talking about the various issues now rather than after certain events absolutely I think the more these discussions we have the better I think it's we're probably playing catch up I think the complementary organisers of tonight here it's very important obviously yourself for having conducted a very very interesting debate and well done thanks very much