Ireland has the fourth highest agricultural emissions per square km of farmland in the EU. A 30% reduction would place us in 5th

40 comments

  1. This is in response to claims from the agricultural lobby that Ireland is the most sustainable producer of food in the world.

    Edit: sorry the title should say 5th and 6th highest.

  3. Pretty pointless without knowing what agriculture the land is used for. There will be different emissions for a field of cows in comparison to a field of corn.

  4. Janey Mack…the green party must be paying people to constantly post here at this stage. Some people won’t be happy until we’re all eating gruel and living in mud huts.

  10. Yeah because we make a LOT of the food! In the same way that Germany and France make all the cars.

    FIATs barely count as cars.

  11. Netherlands is top of that list (and Belgium 2nd). They are 6th largest exporter of food in the world (Belgium are 9th) and it’s a tiny country (Belgium is even smaller). Per square km isn’t a good measure

  12. Cull our herds you are also culling our food security

    The world’s population is growing, I don’t know too much about farming but I know a lot of our fields aren’t suitable for growing typical crops, if we increase our reliance on food imports we’ll witness another famine in Ireland 200 years on from our last one

  13. Cattle. Maximum methane for minimum food production. Requests massive imports of feed every year and huge amounts of land. Most “expensive” farming you can do in terms of resources, paired by very few other things.

    Especially if we’re talking about meat since you have to feed, grow and fatten each calf to then kill them off. It requires unspeakable amounts of feed and you get a calorie for every 9 you put in. Similar ratio with protein and other nutrients, more or less.

    Just for reference, simply check some farmers forum and look how much land is required normally per ONE cow, then also check how much land and feed is required for a grass fed one.

    There’s a lot unsaid and unknown on this topic by the majority. It doesn’t help that our countryside appears to be nothing but pasture.

    ​

    I’m not sure why the Netherlands ranks so high, are they full of livestock? Are they using pure petrol as a fertiliser? Can’t think of anythingthat would push the bar beyond where Ireland is

  15. more “green” scare nonsense. First it was carbon and now nitrogen (aka fertilizers vital for food production). Might be under a noble cause to “save” the environment but this huge emission reductions requirements pretty much spells out that many farmers will be forced to pack up and leave.

    I will resist all this green carbon footprint, destruction of food supply bullshit until nuclear energy is on the table.

  16. Per square kilometer…. Notice how bigger countries are lower in ranking

    Edit: the per square kilometer skews the stat I would like to see absolute figures and how 30% would effect

  17. In context, Ireland is currently NUMBER 1 in the food security index,

    [https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/Index](https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/project/food-security-index/Index)

    So in context of us producing the fourth highest emissions we’re being compared to countries who produce significantly less and rely on Ireland as a producer.

    This is similar in a way to the way that we rely on China to produce our cheap electronics. We can criticize China for waste emissions but if we force China to stop or reduce their output then we’re into a global shortage of what they produce.

    Right now, with Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, under attack, Irelands output is probably important for Local and international market needs.

    What would be key would be finding alternative power sources to maintain the output, rather than simply demanding the sector to just reduce its power use and therefore its output.

  19. It doesn’t really mean much when the average type of farming is very different between countries. The farm organisations crowing about Ireland being one of the most sustainable producers of food would be, I’d say, talking about our ability to produce a litre of milk or kg of beef efficiently in comparison to other countries.

    You could covert a square km of dairy land in Ireland to produce grain and that land would be producing less emissions but it’s probably less efficient than growing it in many other EU countries because of climate/farm size etc. And to produce the dairy/beef of that Irish square km of land in a lot of other EU countries would be far less efficient than doing it here.
    I think that’s basically the argument farmers are putting forward, let those who are most able to efficiently produce certain types of food produce them.

    At the moment everyone is fixated on the headline figure of reducing ag emissions and it will, in my opinion, result in a decrease in the national herd. The demand for what’s produced here only seems to be rising so the gap will be produced elsewhere. What we emit here will fall and everyone can tell us how great we are but it’s hard to see it doing any good when you think about the bigger picture.

  20. You’re in way over your head here lad.
    You’ve found one graph that is a terrible representation (hence why it is not a metric typically used), but it suits your narrative. You even lied in the title so push that further.

    Your lack of knowledge of farming and your ignorance is shocking.
    I see you replying to several comments saying we could feed ourselves if we grew our own crops. We neither have the land nor the climate for human edible tillage production, which is the reason we import so much.
    And don’t come at me about how we could grow more veg. The supermarkets have put 50% of farmers out of business in the last 20 years, the industry is on its knees. So unless you’re prepared to pay multiples of what you’re currently paying for fruit and veg you have no argument. People haven’t been willing to over the last 20 years so that’s not going to change now

  21. The problem is if there is a food supplier in Germany for example who normally orders say 100 tonnes of Irish beef from an Irish producer every year, and now the Irish producer can only supply 70 tonnes, there is no way that someone is not going to import the missing 30 tonnes to meet their orders, like the customers are not just going to stop eating, the same for all the dairy we supply, there is some talk that New Zealand dairy supplies are eyeing up the European market to make up the demand that Europe won’t be able to fill soon.

    Blaming the farmers is fine but that demand is simply not going to go away and it’s likely all of this initiative will result in increased emissions.

  24. Reducing the herd will be pointless as the demand will be met by suppliers elsewhere. So In totality, on the global scale, it will have no impact.

    What you really ‘should’ be saying is we need to eat less meat and dairy. You’re gonna have to tax animal derived products for that to happen. They’ll become a privilege that is seldom eaten. Like it was in the olden days. Are they gonna do that?

    I’d like to see the green folk and Greta tell that to the masses, especially the actual plebs, cause the rich and the upper middle class can easily afford any beef/dairy tax. Begrudgingly so.

    That’s just like now up here in Armagh. The lower middle class and the poor get *disproportionately* shitted on in the name of going green.

    Im paying a fuck ton of money on car tax and green taxes on petrol and electricity (even before the war). I don’t earn much. And what does a it go towards? Subsidising teslas and solar panels for upper middle class cunts. I can never avail of these EV subsidies, even though as you would imagine, the less well off drive the most polluting older cars.

    Currently I’m spending ~15% of my wage on petrol. It was 10% even before Ukraine. Its Lovely. Thank good the Green Party/labour/Lib Dem types ‘care’ about the working class like me. I’m so grateful. All for the planet. Can’t wait to involuntarily go vegetarian too….

  26. Will reducing this not raise prices of food and food byproducts? Similar to what happened with coal/heating. Did they get rid of those 3 for 2 deals when they tried?

    The green party have not realised this puts huge pressure on the low and middle incomes. These knee jerk reactions do not have any foresight of what will happen down the road

  27. OK, and? Of all the crops that Ireland grows it is consistently in the Top 3 or Top 10 of yield per hectare. And then there’s other agri outputs like dairy – don’t forget to factor that in…

  29. Probably because we have a lot of beef and dairy farming compared to other countries?

    Hey, someone’s gotta make that beef. It may as well be us because we’re pretty good at it.

  32. Out of curiosity, does anyone know what are the largest sources of non-agriculture emissions in Ireland?

  33. I just think we should be focused on reducing the non essential emissions stuff first and foremost before tackling agriculture. We need food but we don’t need parents driving their kids 1km to school in a SUV.

    With electric bikes, everywhere within the M50 is easily commutable, so we don’t need so much private city car use.

    Focus on renewable and heat exchanger heating sources and insulation for housing as a primary example to make a real change before we look at food security.

  35. Given we produce mainly grass based animals we are decidedly less efficient on aper area basis, we Don’t have the ideal climate for major tillage which is the advantage of most of the continental countries here

    We also export the majority of our animal produce so someone else is eating but we’re left holding the bag for the emissions.

    We do need to reduce our emissions and the trend is that way but cutting our herd off at the knees is the blunt force approach.
    People focus on the gross number but from an inventory point of view we need 30% less days lived by livestock, that’s either more intensive beef production for earlier slaughter or outright culls

  36. It’d be interesting to track this against food output rather than just area. Or the type of food.

    There’re plenty of areas in the country that can’t be used for cereals and grains and the like, but can support livestock.

  38. Wouldn’t you have to also correlate these to productivity per hectare to be meaningful? Like the Netherlands has high emissions per hectare but it’s literally the most productive farmland on the planet.

  40. >Cut our agricultural output to make literally no dent in global emissions so that the world wont burst into flames like the little girl on TV said.

    If this is you, seek help

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