Taoiseach must stop praising farming - and start curbing it

AS I write this, biblical rain pours down, lightning streaks flash across the sky, and roads, fields and homes are hit by spot-flooding across the county - again.

Thousands of people marched through Midleton streets recently to ‘scream out’ for interim flood protection before the next storm season. Organisers, the Midleton and East Cork Flood Protection Group, said they hoped the event sends a clear message to government that they want and need urgent action in the coming months to protect homes, businesses and lives, pending the delivery of the €50 million flood relief scheme.

Heat, rainfall and weather events continue to break records all over the world. 

People are being killed by turbulence on planes, microplastics have reached the North Pole and are in our blood, in human placentas and testicles; oceans are acidifying, animals are falling out of trees as they overheat, a million species are at risk of extinction.

Meanwhile, our culture, our politicians, our respected national and global icons stay largely silent. They refuse to educate themselves, refuse to raise the alarm, and the majority of our citizens do the same, as we relentlessly pursue profit, growth and comfort over climate and nature stability.

Is the Taoiseach listening?

What is unfolding all around us is worse than any disaster movie, and we are doing almost nothing about it. We even talk about it as if it isn’t real.

 That we have one life and should make the most of it while we can.

In the midst of all this, Simon Harris stated recently that he does not reducing the number of cattle in Ireland, likening it to suggesting that Diageo should cut back on beer production. He also defended the government’s decision to expand the dairy herd, denying it was a mistake. “There’s no need to cut the national herd,” The Taoiseach said.

Ministers have repeatedly questioned the necessity of reducing cattle numbers to allow climate targets to be met - that require carbon emissions to be halved by 2030.

Mr Harris said the agricultural sector isn’t a sector that doesn’t need to change, but that farming is a core part of the Irish economy and should not be seen as an optional extra.

What about a stable climate and functioning ecosystems? Are they a core part of the Irish economy or an ‘optional extra’?

How does defending the expansion of the national herd qualify as farming sustainably? It seems Mr Harris is prioritising the economic benefits of beef and dairy over the impact of food and farming on the fate of planet Earth.

The reality is that agriculture has disrupted the planet more than anything else, including burning fossil fuels. The planet’s future viability depends on this fact being accepted, along with a radical change in how we farm and how we eat.

World-renowned climate scientist and CEO of Project Drawdown, Jonathan Foley states that our intense consumption of meat and dairy products is by far the most significant driver of food’s enormous geographic footprint.

And our consumption of meat is intense. Figures from Our World In Data quantify the annual sale of human meat consumption globally at 360m tonnes. Food Explorer data reveals that in Ireland 19.79kg of beef per capita was available for consumption in 2020 compared to a global average of 8.98kg per capita in the same year.

The study also explore the benefits to reducing our meat consumption. Research by Our World in Data in 2021 showed that if we did not eat meat it would be possible to reduce agricultural land from 4bn to 1bn hectares, allowing wilderness to regrow to provide habitats for wildlife.

A study in Nature Communications (2023) reported that halving the amount of beef, pork, chicken and milk that humanity consumes would halt net deforestation and other loss of natural lands almost entirely and would cut greenhouse gas emissions from land use by nearly a third (31%).

The Taoiseach is not alone in under- estimating the impact of meat and diary on carbon emissions and ability to reach climate targets. Last August, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deleted a tweet about reducing red meat consumption because of objections by the Irish Farmer’s Association that reducing red meat consumption was not in line with dietary guidelines.

This is happening at a time when current farming practices have wiped out entire biomes from the face of the Earth and Europe warms faster than any other continent. Ireland has seen native woodlands, peatlands and hedgerows wiped out by intensive agriculture to maximise productivity.

“Altogether, agriculture has consumed more land - and driven more species and ecosystems to extinction - than any other activity in human history. Nothing else - not timber, not mining, not urban sprawl, not even climate change - comes close,” concludes Jonathan Foley.

Irish agriculture has a tremendous impact on water resources, water pollution from chemical fertilisers with excess nitrogen and phosphorous causing havoc to river ecosystems, degrading lakes and even our coastal oceans.

Beyond the impact of meat and dairy farming on land, biodiversity, water and environmental pollution, farming practices are also a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Yet measures introduced to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions have barely scraped the surface.

In 2022, agriculture contributed 38.5% to overall emissions, a decrease of a miniscule 0.3%. This was associated with a 14% decrease in fertiliser nitrogen use, resulting in less emissions from agricultural soils.

It occurred alongside a 0.9% increase in dairy cow numbers and a 0.7% increase in milk production. The conclusion is that increased efficiencies are being offset by expansion of animal numbers.

Yet Bord Bia, Teagasc and the Government continue to praise Irish agriculture’s ‘sustainable model’.

Margaret Butler, dairy ingredients manager at Bord Bia, told Japanese dairy buyers in 2023 the way we farm is ‘environmentally benign’. Agriculture Minister, Charlie McConalogue suggested at the World Food Forum in Rome last year that Ireland can be the sustainable food capital of the world. The evidence categorically refutes this.

EPA director-general, Laura Burke stated last year that “the environmental sustainability of the sector is not ed by the evidence. Agriculture needs to validate performance around producing food with low environmental input”.

Continuing to market Irish agriculture as ‘environmentally benign’ and sustainable denies the reality of the impact of grass-fed beef and dairy farming on both climate and biodiversity.

It is time for the Taoiseach and the Government to refashion the soundbites and start making hard decisions about the size of the dairy herd.

They must put a laser focus on the absolute requirement to meet climate targets from agriculture over the all-consuming target of persistent growth and the needs of vested interests in the sector.

There are no words to describe the magnitude of this planetary disaster. And it’s only just beginning.

Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood.