Stealth livestock reductions to cut agri-GHG?
Last summer, Irish agriculture was allocated a legally binding 25% GHG emission reduction as its Climate Action sectoral ceiling for the period to 2030. Since then, attention has focused on the now well recognised fact that the plan for agriculture (largely based on the Teagasc MACC) will yield reductions totalling 15-18%, provided all farmers engage. Achieving the balance will require spending money and time on fully developing new technologies, like feed or slurry additives, and genetic low methane emission traits selection.
But though this is anathema to many, achieving the balance in sufficient time will be very difficult without reduction in cattle numbers.
It is telling that Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue announced at the IFA Farming and Climate Summit early this month that any voluntary reduction as suggested by the Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group was now off the table – though similar recommendations for the dairy sector from the Food Vision Dairy Group remain under consideration.
Europe’s answer to the climate challenge from an agricultural perspective, as expressed in its Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, in effect involves lowering animal production. The EU Commission sees this as an acceptable compromise to lower the climate and environmental impact in a part of the world with good food security.
Numerous national and EU interlinked policies are already putting pressure on stocking densities and demand for land – through incentives (various CAP schemes), encouragements to diversify (organic farming, forestry, production of feedstock for biogas generation, carbon farming) or penalisation (CAP conditionality, Nitrates Action Plan). The direction of travel for future environmental policy suggests more of the same.
Mark Twain once said “buy land, they’re not making it any more”. As policy measures heat up demand for this essential, but finite resource, farmers will come under increasing pressure to reduce their stock numbers.
Measures incentivising deintensification
Eco-schemes
Out of eight measures farmers can chose from under the new CAP Eco-scheme to secure part of their direct payment, four have the potential to reduce stock numbers, directly or indirectly.
- Increasing space for nature on the farm over and above the GAEC 4% minimum could potentially reduce productive grassland.
- Extensive livestock production promotes lower stocking.
- Limiting chemical nitrogen use could reduce grass production, unless it is otherwise mitigated through clover seeding or other means.
- Planting additional native trees and/or hedgerows may reduce land available for grazing or fodder production.
While Eco-schemes are not mandatory, farmers who do not undertake at least two of the eight actions (the first two above each can count as two in certain conditions) will not receive the corresponding part of the direct payment, potentially losing out on up to 25% of their Direct Payment.
ACRES
The ACRES Scheme (Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme) is the successor to GLAS, operated under the CAP Pillar II Rural Development programme. It has a massive €1.5bn budget for the five-year period, with a target of 50,000 farmers participating over the period.
In addition to practices to improve biodiversity, ACRES also encourages and rewards the widespread uptake of practices that presuppose deintensification. Some require utilising potentially productive land, others to reduce its productivity, including: tree planting in rows, groups or parkland, orchard planting, riparian buffers, tree belts for ammonia capture at farmyards, wider grass margins to protect water courses, low input grassland management, extensively grazed pasture.
Diversification as a route to deintensification
Organic farming scheme
The new Irish CAP National Strategic Plan sets out to increase the area under organic farming from less than 2% of farmland currently to 7.5% by 2027 (an increase of even greater magnitude than the EU plan in Farm to Fork). The financial allocation from the CAP Pillar II budget for the Irish sector is a significant €256m for the 5-year period.
This features in the Food Vision 2030 Implementation Plan, where it is identified as an important element in promoting the viability, improved resilience and well-being of primary producers through diversification.
Forestry
The draft national Forestry Programme 2023-27 aims to plant 8000 ha per annum, based on premiums increased by up to 66%, in order to boost Ireland’s afforestation from 11% to 18% by 2030.
While it will appeal to some farmers, it will compete for farmland with others.
The recent launch of a joint Coillte-Gresham House forestry investment fund has not only angered farmers, it has also further cranked up prices on the Irish land market. Auctioneers speaking to the Farmers Journal in early January stated the price for heavier ground in the West of Ireland could increase from €6500 to €8000 per acre – and while you would not expect them to say any different, the launch of this large fund (€200m) on the market for up to 12,000 ha of new and existing forests is bound to heat up prices.
Measures forcing deintensification
Mandated “space for nature”
The new GAEC 8 of the CAP Strategic Plan requires a minimum 4% of a farm’s agricultural area devoted to “space for nature” as a pre-condition to receive the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS, the new name for the Basic Payment). This involves the maintenance of features such as fallow land, hedgerows, drains/ditches, buffer strips, stone walls, ponds, monuments, scrubs or other habitats. Studies have shown that few farms will fail to clear this bar, but for those that do, it will nibble into productive land.
Also, as outlined above, farmers will have to do better than 4% (at least 7% or 10%) space for nature should they choose the corresponding Eco-Scheme, on which up to 25% of their Direct Payment will be contingent.
Nitrates Action Plan
Perhaps the most impactful measure in terms of deintensification is the set of actions required of farmers who want to retain their Nitrates derogation. While ostensibly aiming to protect water (and air) quality, the Nitrates action plan for derogation farmers is reviewed almost annually, and will continue to come with lower stocking limits.
The 2023 review, based on water quality data, could reduce the maximum organic nitrogen below 250kg/ha within a year or two. The new “banding” calculation of organic N equivalent represented by each dairy cow will from this year vary to reflect actual milk yield where the information is made available by the farmer, and where it is not, the maximum yield will be assumed. This will certainly increase the N/ha for many highly productive dairy farmers beyond derogation level, and even force some who had operated below 170kgsN/ha into derogation territory. Those farmers will have to either increase land area, increase slurry exports, or decrease the number of animals on their land.
As a direct result of those anticipated changes, land leasing prices have been hiked up by at least €100 per acre to around €350-500 in the South and East according to reports last December in the Farmers’ Journal.
Only Denmark and Ireland currently benefit from an EU approved N derogation. It is entirely possible that the EU could, in the medium term, at best further decrease the upper limit, at worst refuse to renew the derogation unless our water quality data improves.
More competition for land ahead?
Ecosystem restoration
Published last summer, the draft Nature Restoration regulation was announced in the EU Biodiversity Strategy of May 2020. It would set binding targets for EU member states to restore ecosystems covering at least 20% of EU land and sea by 2030, and all ecosystems in need or restoration by 2050. This would include rewetting of drained wetland or bogs.
The draft legislation has encountered a lot of resistance among member states, including because of its potential economic and social implications. Furthermore, it is unclear how the required actions, which are to be permanent, would be funded. However, it will proceed in some form and will in time take yet more land out of productive agricultural use.
Carbon farming
Though the EU has done quite a bit of work in this space, as of yet there are no recognised, practical, readily available avenues for farmers to measure and get rewarded for carbon sequestration. But when there are, increasing carbon sequestration and building up carbon credits will involve making permanent farming practice changes which will limit a participating farmer’s ability to produce food.
Biogas generation
The revised Climate Action Plan aims to build 20 anaerobic digestion (AD) plants by 2025 (150-200 by 2050). Farmers will be able to supply feedstock for those plants, grass or other types of biomass in order to diversify their sources of incomes away from livestock based activity.
There are no details yet as to how this might work, and recent events suggest securing planning permission for those plants will prove difficult. However, the IFA study below identifies it as the largest potential source of land requirement away from food production.
And let’s not forget climate change
Presenting Met Éireann’s annual statement on climate for 2022 earlier this month, Keith Lambkin, head of Met Éireann’s Climate Services Division, said warming trends seen in Ireland are in line with trends seen globally. He said climate change projections indicate further hotter, drier summers for Europe and for Ireland, and an increased risk of heatwaves and periods of drought.
Greater frequency of drought will challenge Irish grassland farmers’ ability to continue growing adequate quantities of pasture and fodder.
Less land for livestock farming = less livestock
The Irish Farmers’ Association has calculated that 384,700 ha or 9% of existing agricultural area, excluding rough grazing and commonages, are set to be taken out of livestock farming systems by government policies over coming years. This consists of 68,500 ha for new forestry, 115,000 ha to produce feedstock for up to 200 (AD) plants planned by 2050, 80,000 ha from reduced farming intensity on drained organic soils, 28,000ha from the impact of changes in the Nitrates Action Programme (NAP), and 51,500 ha for additional tillage land. And this does not factor in forthcoming policies which have yet to become law.
They also predicted that farmers would have to either find 27,000 ha of additional land or cull 52,000 cows to meet the conditions of the new NAP.
Impact on farm incomes and the economy?
It is absolutely essential that the policies pursued do address our climate targets. Agriculture at least does have a plan to get some of the way towards its 25% target, which is more than can be said about many other sectors.
However, the focus on reducing GHG emissions will clearly also pressure farmers’ livelihoods and the very significant economic value of the agrifood sector to the Irish economy. In 2022, it produced €12bn in output value at farm gate level and contributed €16.7bn worth of export to Ireland’s trade balance sheet – and that is not the full picture.
CSO have calculated that every €1 of agrifood output is worth €2.06 to the Irish economy – much of that spin off based in rural areas and local towns. In his presentation to the IFA’s Farming and Climate Summit on 10th January, food economist Ciarán Fitzgerald quoted the KPMG/Farmers’ Journal study last year had found that 41,000 jobs directly depended on the local agri-food industry in and around the towns of Ballyhaunis, Cavan, Charleville and Enniscorthy. He also cited an EY study for Tirlán which identified 17,600 full time jobs directly related to its activity. To paraphrase Ciarán Fitzgerald, Ireland’s agri-food sector is too often wrongly assumed by some policy decision makers and commentators to make a low contribution which would be easily replaced.
In this publication, we always aim to be realistic, but positive. This is because agriculture is a fundamentally positive sector, and one which is proactively engaged in addressing its environmental and climate challenge, busily implementing the Teagasc MACC measures and more.
According to Teagasc, in the last year alone, specialist dairy farmers have increased their lime usage by 49%, their use of protected urea by 59%, and use low emission slurry spreading methods (LESS) for 48% of their slurry (it was only 4% in 2018).
Farmers see their vocation primarily as sustainable producers of quality, nutritious food produced with respect for the environment, animal welfare and human wellbeing. All plan to pass on their land to the next generation in better condition than they inherited or acquired it. They will respond to policy and market signals and continue to invest in and adopt technologies and practices which improve their environmental and climate footprint. With well thought-out frameworks, pathways and supports, they will engage in diversification if it makes sense to them economically and otherwise.
The agri-food sector remains the backbone of rural Ireland’s economy. Our collective challenge is to find ways to continue improving its sustainability, decrease GHG emissions, including through some judicious deintensification as necessary, without damaging farmers’ livelihoods, or losing the value added by our industry to our national economy.
© Catherine Lascurettes, Cúl Dara Consultancy
