Technological innovation in agriculture will be critical to meeting climate target obligations
Full disclosure: as the recently appointed chief operations officer of AgTech Ireland, you would expect me to argue that agtech will play an important role in the development of sustainable Irish agriculture. But it can be demonstrated convincingly.
More agtech components in MACCs
A couple of months ago, Teagasc issued version 3 of its Marginal Abatement Cost Curves for GHG in agriculture, land use and renewable energy production/energy savings on farms. This is an updated plan developed by Teagasc scientists and researchers to identify farm management practices and technologies which when adopted can ensure farmers reduce their carbon emissions and their environmental footprint. The new MACC for agriculture is based on scenarios for different animal number evolutions and pathways reflecting the extent of adoption, in order to identify the extent to which emissions can be reduced.
The first MACC for Irish agriculture was published by Teagasc in 2012, the fruit of extensive scientific research and work by Teagasc’s Rogier Schulte and his team. There is no better proof of the increasing importance of agtech than the evolution of the MACCs since 2012. Technological innovation has clearly become baked into the more recent iterations of the plan, and it shows a clear understanding that further innovation will be key to further improvements in the sector’s sustainability performance.
The first MACC in 2012 “encompassed only the measures that were relevant to the characteristics of Irish farming and where both data and abatement potential from completed scientific research and activity data for Ireland were available”. It included 15 measures, as outlined in the visual representation below, all entirely focused on agriculture.
Even in the 2012 MACC, agtech solutions were already identified as important as is shown by the purple areas in the graphic above (min till, low emission spreading technology, anaerobic digestion and nitrification inhibitors).
By 2018, with version 2 of the MACCs, Teagasc included 27 measures, which were separated into three MACCs – an agriculture MACC had 14 measures, a land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) MACC included five, and the bioenergy MACC had another eight measures.
The new, 2023 MACCs include a total of 33 measures, split between agriculture (efficiency four measures and mitigation 14 measures – see graph below); LULUCF mitigation measures (including six associated with forestry and hedgerows, and five measures to enhance/protect soil organic carbon levels); and lastly four more measures target renewable energy production/savings on farms.
The graphic below shows the Agricultural MACC, for Scenario 1 (most likely evolution of animal numbers), Pathway 2 (high level of adoption).
Agtech is not just machinery
While some technology solutions were built into the first MACC, many more of the newly envisaged measures have technology components, and machinery is only part of it. The measures identified include input from the bio tech and chemical sectors, genetics, veterinary and data. Among others, we find: cultivation of biofuel and bioenergy crops in conjunction with anaerobic digestion, on-farm energy efficiency; reduced crude protein feeds for cattle and pigs, bovine feed additives to improve health or reduce emissions, LESS technology, slurry aeration and additives, improved animal genetics for productivity, health, and reduced emissions.
Feed additives: agtech goes from pipe dream to reality
With the right supports, agtech can evolve solutions, fast. A short few years ago, seaweed-based substances with the potential to be added to ruminant feed to reduce methane emission were an experimental, remote possibility, focusing initially on exotic seaweed from the Pacific, with potentially limited effectiveness outside the lab, and at best difficult to utilise in a grass-based system.
Now, research and industry, working together, have brought forward additives based on a wider variety of seaweeds, developing methods to farm them at scale on land or in the ocean, which have realistic and significant potential to reduce the methane production of ruminants. Industry is developing boluses to deliver the additive inside the rumen for long-acting effect on grazing bovines. All delivered by collaboration between research and industry, with ongoing trials in Irish conditions, and a realistic prospect that costs will decrease as production and adoption scale up. What was not so long ago a pipe dream is looking increasingly like a real solution, with significant input from agtech companies to deliver product economically to market.
Beyond the headline grabbing feed additives, it is worth remembering just how fast farmers have adopted other technologies, in part in response to regulations, but also to improve the sustainability – economic and social as much as environmental – of their enterprises. LESS spreading systems like trailing shoes, hoses and injectors, which only spread 4% of the aggregate volume of slurry in 2017 spread 48% of it in 2021 (and undoubtedly way more than this today – Teagasc estimated 75% of slurry spread on dairy farms in 2022 was spread using LESS). According to Teagasc, the use of protected urea (which reduces ammonia losses from fertiliser) has increased by 59% in 2022. More and more farmers use feed additives (probiotics and others) to improve the health and thrive of their animals, utilise slurry additives and aerators to reduce associated emissions, routinely work with genetic data through the EBI in their breeding selections (over 75% of dairy cows had an EBI record in 2019), and most manage their farm inputs, animal health and financial data through apps and computer programmes, all developed by agtech companies.
Add to this the increasing interest in labour-reducing or easing robotic solutions, reducing energy consumption with more efficient farm machinery and technology, generating renewable energy to reduce the farm’s costs and potentially feed back into the grid, and you start to realise just how present agtech is on today’s Irish farms who strive to improve their sustainability.
Agtech solutions key to speedy adoption, too
New innovations which researchers in universities or Teagasc and engineers in agtech companies are developing and bringing to market are only potential sustainability game changers if on-farm adoption occurs at scale and at speed. This requires ready access of agtech products and services at economic costs, as well as technical support and potentially financial incentives through TAMS or other schemes, too.
In its MACC work, Teagasc had identified scenarios and pathways which suggest that for agriculture to meet its 25% GHG cut obligation by 2030 with relative stability in overall cattle numbers (scenario 1), we need maximum adoption of new measures and technologies (pathway 2).
The agtech sector is now an accepted, integral part of the Irish agricultural ecosystem. Within a favourable regulatory framework and with good access to finance, it is ready and able to play its full part in supporting Irish farmers through their sustainability and climate action journey.
© Catherine Lascurettes, Cúl Dara Consultancy
