Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 14 July 2022
16. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the way that he can support farmers and the agri-food sector to achieve its carbon emissions targets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38519/22]
View answerAs the Deputy will be aware, all sectors of the economy will have to deliver on challenging targets in order to achieve the economy wide 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
The agriculture sector will need to reduce emissions by between 22% to 30% by 2030, this will require signficant change across each one of our 140,000 family farms. I have been clear that a whole-of-sector, whole-of-government approach will be needed to achieve our objectives. Regulation, public supports and incentives, in conjunction with private industry supports will all an important role.
In terms of public supports, the CAP Strategic Plan, which is currently going through the approval process, will undoubtedly be a key pillar of the State's climate action support. The CAP Strategic Plan will provide €9.8bn of support the economic, environmental and social sustainability for farmers and rural communities.
Key elements of this plan include:
- a new Eco-scheme. This scheme has a number of climate- and environment-focused farming practices, which will be open to all farmers. These include practices aimed at reducing chemical nitrogen usage, increasing tree planting, increasing nature- and biodiversity-rich land areas and encouraging extensive livestock production;
- an ambitious new Pillar II environmental scheme, the ACRES scheme, targeted at 50,000 participants. This will be underpinned by a greater focus on results-based actions and on collective actions aimed at achieving landscape-scale benefits;
- an Organic Farming Scheme aimed at more than tripling the area of agricultural land that is farmed organically;
- A suckler carbon efficiency scheme which will contribute to the objective of early finishing times of our prime beef cattle. This will reward farmers with a payment of €150/cow on the first 10 cows, compared with €90/cow on the outgoing BDGP.
In addition, I established two Food Vision 2030 working groups on dairy and on beef and sheep meat which will set out a clear roadmap to enable the sectors reduce emissions.
I have already committed support, such as through supporting Soil Sampling to measure soil carbon, support for low and indeed in some cases, no Nitrogen crops such as Multi-species and Red clover mixes.
I will work with industry to ensure that their sustainability payment supports fully align with our public supports. By taking this coordinated approach, I am confident the sector will be able to achieve its climate objectives.
