October 17th, 2019
A sustainable food
production movement calling for a revolution in Irish agriculture protested outside
of the Department of Agriculture yesterday.
The protest was held
by Talamh Beo, a grassroots farmer movement that formed earlier this year to
explore how ecosystems and people can live alongside each other.
Members of the
organization brought buckets of soil from their own farms to symbolize their
commitment to “caring for the land, their communities and the
environment”.
Talamh Beo are calling
for a sustainable revolution in agriculture that they say will ensure liveable
wages for farmers, affordable and nutritious food for consumers, and help
protect the environment.
“Farmers have become
locked in a system where they are producing commodities for global markets
instead of food, fuel and fibre for their communities,” founding Talamh Beo
member Fergal Anderson said.
“We do not have a
diverse integrated production system in Ireland – we have a monoculture of
grass, huge fertilizer and feed imports and an almost exclusive focus on the export
market,” he added.
The group hopes to
bring sustainable farming alternatives such as biological farming, regenerative
agriculture, and agroforestry into the mainstream and are pushing for
government support.
Ireland has many solutions to offer for land use, according to Talamh Beo member Fergal Smith, that need to become the norm in order to “bring about a huge change in how people approach and think about land use and food production”.
Agriculture Emissions
To date, agriculture
is Ireland’s largest carbon-emitting sector, producing roughly a third of the
country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
A number of proposed agricultural
actions were put forward in the new Climate
Action Plan including improving nitrogen use efficiency and methane-mitigating
feed additives for livestock.
However, many
environmental and climate NGOs have said that the Government’s plan may not
deliver the necessary emissions reduction required for the industry.
John Brennan from Talamh Beo said that the government had “again failed to
make a bold move to transform Irish agriculture” and has instead “made a few
woolly statements”.
Mr Brennan said that
government plans to review the effectiveness of the Teagasc programme that
promotes organics and farm income diversification options are “vague
platitudes”.
He added that “the
effectiveness of Teagasc of promoting organic farming is nothing short of
tokenistic and abysmal”.
The launch came as an ‘open policy debate’ on the future of Irish farming was held at the Aviva Stadium, hosted by Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed, which Talamh Beo members will also attend.
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