URBAN DWELLERS, not beef farmers, would be hardest hit if cattle were culled to help Ireland meet its requirement of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2020.
A study on the impact of such a policy was presented yesterday to a major conference on climate change in Dublin, which showed beef farmers would lose €183 million and the processing sector €570 million.
Dr Cathal O’Donoghue, head of Teagasc’s rural economy research centre, said beef farmers, who currently produce beef at a loss, would be least affected by the policy but would lose €183 million.
On the other hand, he said, the processing sector, its employees and shareholders, stood to lose €570 million and this money would come out of the wider rural economies.
“Hardest hit would be urban households, especially those in areas around the midlands like Roscommon, people in the towns where the people who had been working in factories would lose their jobs,” he said.
He told the conference, organised by Teagasc’s greenhouse gases working group, the figures had been reached using a new model which was devised by Teagasc and Trinity College.
Teagasc director Prof Gerry Boyle said while agriculture accounted for 25 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Ireland, it was the only sector where emissions had fallen by 8 per cent since 1990.
He said rather than capping greenhouse gas emissions through limiting food production, Ireland should focus on minimising its emission per kg of food or “carbon footprint”.
Dr John Gilliland, chairman of the Rural Climate Change Forum in London and Ireland’s foremost expert in renewable energy, said this was already happening in international markets where consumers were driving the demand for food produced at low carbon levels.
He said farmers here should know that in Britain, Tesco, to which many sold their produce, had pledged to have its food produced with zero carbon emissions by 2050. “It has also said it wants a 30 per cent reduction in carbon footprint on the food it sells over the next decade,” Mr Gilliland said.
McDonald’s, he added, had also entered this area and Walkers Crisps, a company owned by Pepsi, was advertising its products as having lower carbon footprints than in the past and carbon levels were already being listed on milk cartons in Britain.
There was an urgent need to engage farmers and educate them on what they had to do to meet targets coupled with an acceptable international standard to judge greenhouse gas emissions.
Mark Gibson of Teagasc in Athenry said most Irish agricultural emissions were related to livestock production with the main sources being methane belched by cattle, nitrous oxide from soils and methane and nitrous oxide from manure management.
He outlined the work by Teagasc on reducing greenhouse gases by changing the diet of cattle, genetic breeding – which meant animals could be slaughtered earlier in their lives – and educating farmers on when and how to spread manures at the most favourable time.
All speakers agreed that while there were difficulties to be faced, there were also opportunities as Ireland’s grass-based dairy system had been found by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to have one of the smallest carbon footprints in the world.