From the IFA led debacle at Bord Bia to Trump’s pathetic rollback on climate science, and this Government’s failure to publish the Land use Review and the 2026 Climate Action Plan – enough distraction to keep the focus away from the real life problems of climate change and biodiversity loss…
The current distraction for Irish Agriculture is the IFA led debacle over Larry Murrin’s role as chair of Bord Bia. This witch-hunt will achieve nothing, even if they do manage to heave him out.
The previous distraction was the EU-Mercosur trade deal itself, and the one before that was the Nitrates derogation. Throw in some outcry over ‘red tape’ and ‘regulatory burdens” and you have enough material to keep the focus well and truly away from dealing with some existential challenges like biodiversity loss, and our changing climate. Both of which will have long term damaging impacts on Irish agriculture and society as a whole.
Couple all of that with the distraction that is Trump’s recent pathetic, yet predictable, rollback on climate science, which sends a signal to climate change deniers across the world that a business-as-usual approach is just fine.
Equally so, this Government’s continued procrastination in publishing the Phase 2 of the Land Use Review and the 2026 Climate Action Plan further indicates that we too are just fine the way were are – there is nothing to see here, there is no urgency.
However, life as we know it must change. Otherwise, we are committing our children and grandchildren, to a bleak future, with greater inequality, increased injustice, a natural world devoid of meaningful life, and a world incapable of growing the food we need to survive.
Food, of course, is something we in Ireland produce in abundance, but we have pushed things too far, in the wrong direction, and we see the effects of that in our water, in our air, on our natural habitats and in our biodiversity.
Like all of society, agriculture must continue to change and evolve to current and future challenges – from unstable markets to volatile weather. How we use our land, and how we farm it, is central to this.
Sadly, it is still very much the case that when agriculture and environment are spoken about in the same conversation, polar opposite views are often expressed. Common ground disappears, along with common sense. But we should be careful with the rhetoric, because while noisy exchanges might make for good radio or TV, they do little to move the debate on, and yet again more distraction fills the void.
We need to keep this simple.
What that means is:
- Accepting that farming must work within the ecological limits it is bound by.
- Accepting that we have pushed against those boundaries for too long,
- Accepting that a different approach [working with nature] is needed to build both on-farm resilience and to restore natural habitats.
If we can all reach agreement on those, then we have a basis for some proactive debate on the solutions. Easier said than done I suspect.
I cringe every time I hear that the objective of the first Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), back in 1962, was to “produce cheap food”. No doubt anyone defending such a view would have said it was what people wanted…but just look at what we’ve created as a result. A race to the bottom, with ever increasing input costs, decreasing returns, and a natural environment pushed to the brink.
But in the design of the most recent CAP, when the citizens of the EU were consulted about what they wanted their money to be spent on – cheap food didn’t get a mention. The three most pressing issues were, delivering a fair standard of living for farmers, removing pressures on the environment, and dealing with climate change. It will be interesting to see what comes back this time round with a new CAP due for 2028.
“The consumer won’t pay” is also frequent chant from those who wish to do nothing. Yet when consumers have access to higher quality food, which is biodiversity and habitat friendly with a lower carbon footprint, many are paying. For example, the EU market for organic food has continued to grow, despite a slowdown during the covid pandemic. The ‘less but better’ approach to food consumption can help drive a more resilient and healthier agricultural system.
The real truth in fact is that all consumers are paying and will continue to pay for inaction – maybe not directly at the till – but in their taxes to bail out flooded businesses and forage-short farmers, to clean polluted waterways, restore degraded habitats, and for future billion-euro fines for inaction.
We are not obliged to feed 40 or 50 million wealthy people around the world, and certainly not at the expense of our natural resources. But we are obliged to clean our water, and our air, protect habitats and meet our climate targets. There is a better way, and indeed many farmers are already doing this by taking a soil regenerating and nature first approach to their farming practices, while maintaining output and often increasing farm income. It can be done, but we need more of it.
I was honoured to share a stage with former President Mary Robinson at the Tipperary International Peace Award in 2019, when she was the righteous recipient of that award. We both spoke that day about Peace and Climate Justice, and I ended up musing, that at the end of the day, Mother Nature will come out on top.
Like it or not, SHE is the one who is in charge here. So, we need to start taking direction from her – observing her, learning from her, working with her, and not believing we can dictate to her. Realistically, agriculture is the only sector that has the potential to work in harmony with Nature and what she does best – regenerating and restoring, cleaning and filtering, nurturing and propagating, in her own unique, diverse and balanced way.
The time for avoidance, for kicking that famous can a little further down the road, has gone. Those who want to believe we can row back on action on climate and biodiversity because Trump says so, or because the IFA says farmers are doing enough already, or because Germany still has coal mines, or because Ireland is minuscule compared to China, need to face reality.
The fact is we are still one of the highest per capita emitters in the world, and we urgently need to do something about that; not just for internationally binding targets, or for the EU – but for ourselves, our communities, our families and our futures.