sustainable. buying tonnes of energy intensive ammonium nitrate from russia, mined phosphates from china and spreading cow shite over ecologically dead top soil
pull the other one drunk driver
Absolutely and there’s a concerted effort by a couple of bad faith users using multiple alts on r/Ireland to spread misinformation and muddy the waters around this issue.
Perhaps farmers are rightly angry when they are being compared to beef from the Amazon etc. (4-5x higher emissions than here)
We sell into a globalised market, we are beef and dairy centric because our costs of production are too high for cereals and vegetables, Irish farmers cannot compete with imports brought in by supermarkets.
Irish agriculture is world class on almost every metric. There are things we have improved on and there is more to be done, but progress is being made.
I see a lot of stuff talking about how most agricultural land is used for livestock which conveniently neglects to mention that the land may not be arable otherwise. They also neglect to mention that fertiliser has a massive carbon footprint, but our use of it is massively reduced by spreading livestock manure instead. People also neglect to mention that most of what animals eat is silage and other non-human-edible plant material like husks and brewery waste. Livestock can turn inedible calories that provide humans no nutrition into nutritious foods like dairy and meat. That’s not even mentioning that livestock methane emissions are dwarfed by the methane emitted by waste food going to land fill. That seems to be an inevitable fact of a capitalist system that nobody wants to tackle, but everyone wants to get rid of livestock.
Let’s not pretend that the issue is simple and just involves culling all the livestock in Ireland. The livestock sector needs to tackle this problem properly to get a system of food production that is efficient and works together with arable farming. Getting rid of all the livestock would be a climate disaster for this country due to the increased fertiliser requirements alone. Cows are not climate boogeymen, they have a lot of advantages if used properly in an overall food production system that’s designed around low emission.
Top down dictates on how farmers should operate while ignoring farmers concerns and calling them “manufactured” is not a debate, it’s a decree from globalists with the hubris to think they own and control our food supply, which they are rapidly privatising under the guise of climate alarmism.
Also very interesting to see this useless brainwashed user posting WEF and NATO propaganda all day every day like a full time job.
Over the whole global lock down period I kept farming everyday. Less air travel, car travel andother factors clearly helped the environment in that time. It feels like thats never mentioned.
This is a complicated issue. Consumption and price i think is a main issue. Not to mention that Reducing the beef production in Ireland will encourage growth in other countries that do not have as high as standards as Ireland or Europe when it comes to environmental and general farming practices.
Also we all know that Farmers and factory workers( They also deserved to be mentioned.) are not being paid enough for the work they put in. Like most farmers would go bust without grants. This is due to several factors like cheap meat and the factory owners and supermarkets wanting the profit.
Also the average age of a farmer is 55-56 (just googled Average age of Irish farmer) This is partially due to younger people seeing their Families struggle making a living and are opting out of that lifestyle/job.
But look I’m not sure exactly how to fix this but I do know that if we don’t tackle imports and consumption we will be responsible for more deforestation and a higher rate of greenhouse gasses being produced.
News I’ve heard on the grape vine is that large to medium dairy businesses are making €100-150k per month. You think farmers are going to give that up without a fight?
Seriously, do not believe the IFA propaganda. A farmer has paid €31,500/acre for grazing land in Kilkenny all because the externalities aren’t paid by the farmer business but by the environment and the tax payer.
Feed the cows seaweed and no more worries. The greens could fund an entirely new sector to produce and harvest this feed supplement and slash our methane emissions by 80% but instead just want to kill half the cows and buy everything from Brazil.
Farmers have destroyed biodiversity in this country.
Massive deforestation.
Yeah let’s cripple our domestic food production because Hannah Daly from the Irish Times says so.
I mean every industry that would be negatively impacted by concessions to the environment is going to reinvest in making people believe it doesn’t actually need to make any of those changes. Its why nothing will ever be definitively done about it, anywhere in the world. The economy as it exists now is completely unsuited to tackling this issue.
Yeah that’s what the world needs. Unaffordable food for the poor. Environmentalism as a religion is pretty wild. Not in the wildest excesses of the various world religions did they suggest starving millions of people to death for their sun god.
Isn’t it amazing how articles like this appear in the Irish Times, on cue, just when the government is making a big push in a particular direction. Always lots of talk about the dangers of “misinformation”. Misinformation of course in this context is anything that contradicts government policy. Some very cozy relationships between IT journalists and our esteemed ministers no doubt.
I will preface this by saying I grew up on a farm. a dairy herd on 90 acres.
The issue with Irish agriculture is how fragmented it is. Tons of small scale farms propped up by subsidy payments from the EU and a generational lack of investment. H&S and environmental standards on farms in Ireland are abysmal. Change is needed and we need to clean up our act.
This is a global problem and although we actually have extremely high quality produce, the issue remains, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s one of the biggest categories of emissions. Transport power generation and agriculture. I’m sure the same debate is being had in Brazil, China, etc. No point blaming them. Everyone needs to change.
15 comments
sustainable. buying tonnes of energy intensive ammonium nitrate from russia, mined phosphates from china and spreading cow shite over ecologically dead top soil
pull the other one drunk driver
Absolutely and there’s a concerted effort by a couple of bad faith users using multiple alts on r/Ireland to spread misinformation and muddy the waters around this issue.
Perhaps farmers are rightly angry when they are being compared to beef from the Amazon etc. (4-5x higher emissions than here)
We sell into a globalised market, we are beef and dairy centric because our costs of production are too high for cereals and vegetables, Irish farmers cannot compete with imports brought in by supermarkets.
Irish agriculture is world class on almost every metric. There are things we have improved on and there is more to be done, but progress is being made.
I see a lot of stuff talking about how most agricultural land is used for livestock which conveniently neglects to mention that the land may not be arable otherwise. They also neglect to mention that fertiliser has a massive carbon footprint, but our use of it is massively reduced by spreading livestock manure instead. People also neglect to mention that most of what animals eat is silage and other non-human-edible plant material like husks and brewery waste. Livestock can turn inedible calories that provide humans no nutrition into nutritious foods like dairy and meat. That’s not even mentioning that livestock methane emissions are dwarfed by the methane emitted by waste food going to land fill. That seems to be an inevitable fact of a capitalist system that nobody wants to tackle, but everyone wants to get rid of livestock.
Let’s not pretend that the issue is simple and just involves culling all the livestock in Ireland. The livestock sector needs to tackle this problem properly to get a system of food production that is efficient and works together with arable farming. Getting rid of all the livestock would be a climate disaster for this country due to the increased fertiliser requirements alone. Cows are not climate boogeymen, they have a lot of advantages if used properly in an overall food production system that’s designed around low emission.
Top down dictates on how farmers should operate while ignoring farmers concerns and calling them “manufactured” is not a debate, it’s a decree from globalists with the hubris to think they own and control our food supply, which they are rapidly privatising under the guise of climate alarmism.
Also very interesting to see this useless brainwashed user posting WEF and NATO propaganda all day every day like a full time job.
Over the whole global lock down period I kept farming everyday. Less air travel, car travel andother factors clearly helped the environment in that time. It feels like thats never mentioned.
This is a complicated issue. Consumption and price i think is a main issue. Not to mention that Reducing the beef production in Ireland will encourage growth in other countries that do not have as high as standards as Ireland or Europe when it comes to environmental and general farming practices.
Also we all know that Farmers and factory workers( They also deserved to be mentioned.) are not being paid enough for the work they put in. Like most farmers would go bust without grants. This is due to several factors like cheap meat and the factory owners and supermarkets wanting the profit.
Also the average age of a farmer is 55-56 (just googled Average age of Irish farmer) This is partially due to younger people seeing their Families struggle making a living and are opting out of that lifestyle/job.
But look I’m not sure exactly how to fix this but I do know that if we don’t tackle imports and consumption we will be responsible for more deforestation and a higher rate of greenhouse gasses being produced.
News I’ve heard on the grape vine is that large to medium dairy businesses are making €100-150k per month. You think farmers are going to give that up without a fight?
Seriously, do not believe the IFA propaganda. A farmer has paid €31,500/acre for grazing land in Kilkenny all because the externalities aren’t paid by the farmer business but by the environment and the tax payer.
Feed the cows seaweed and no more worries. The greens could fund an entirely new sector to produce and harvest this feed supplement and slash our methane emissions by 80% but instead just want to kill half the cows and buy everything from Brazil.
https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/feeding-cattle-seaweed-reduces-their-greenhouse-gas-emissions-82-percent
Farmers have destroyed biodiversity in this country.
Massive deforestation.
Yeah let’s cripple our domestic food production because Hannah Daly from the Irish Times says so.
I mean every industry that would be negatively impacted by concessions to the environment is going to reinvest in making people believe it doesn’t actually need to make any of those changes. Its why nothing will ever be definitively done about it, anywhere in the world. The economy as it exists now is completely unsuited to tackling this issue.
Yeah that’s what the world needs. Unaffordable food for the poor. Environmentalism as a religion is pretty wild. Not in the wildest excesses of the various world religions did they suggest starving millions of people to death for their sun god.
Isn’t it amazing how articles like this appear in the Irish Times, on cue, just when the government is making a big push in a particular direction. Always lots of talk about the dangers of “misinformation”. Misinformation of course in this context is anything that contradicts government policy. Some very cozy relationships between IT journalists and our esteemed ministers no doubt.
I will preface this by saying I grew up on a farm. a dairy herd on 90 acres.
The issue with Irish agriculture is how fragmented it is. Tons of small scale farms propped up by subsidy payments from the EU and a generational lack of investment. H&S and environmental standards on farms in Ireland are abysmal. Change is needed and we need to clean up our act.
This is a global problem and although we actually have extremely high quality produce, the issue remains, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s one of the biggest categories of emissions. Transport power generation and agriculture. I’m sure the same debate is being had in Brazil, China, etc. No point blaming them. Everyone needs to change.
Ok. Now downvote me to oblivion.