June 26th, 2019
Climate action measures are a “potential threat” to the beef sector, a new Joint Committee on Agriculture report has found.
The
Future
of the Beef sector in the context of Food Wise 2025 report
launched yesterday
examines
the
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and potential threats to the
Irish beef industry.
The
report comes at the mid-point for ten-year Department of Agriculture,
Food and the Marine plan Food
Wise 2025
which
began in 2015.
The
plan identified growth projections for the agriculture industry, such
as the creation of 23,000 additional jobs and an 85 per cent increase
in exports.
The
beef sector was set as the report’s focus as the industry is under
“increasing pressure for a number of reasons” according to
Committee chairman Pat Deering TD, one being agriculture’s role in
climate change.
“The
evidence provided to the Committee indicates that stakeholders in the
beef sector are willing to play their part,” Mr Deering said in the
report’s foreword.
“But
the Committee believes that a much more detailed discussion between
all stakeholders needs to take place so that the ambitions of the
agricultural sector can be aligned with Ireland’s Paris Agreement
commitments,” he continued.
Recognizing
agriculture as a sector accounting for one-third of Ireland’s
greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, the Committee, endorsed the
recommendations of the Joint Committee on Climate Action and
recommended that the Department of Agriculture engage on a
cross-departmental level with the “farming, environmental and
scientific communities”.
The
plan also reiterated its support for its own 2018
report
to
the Minister for Agriculture entitled Climate
Change and Sustainability in the Agriculture and Food Sectors.
Amongst
the 2018 report’s recommendations were to encourage emission
reductions in livestock and manure management and in agricultural
soils/fertilizers, as well the incentivization of reduced food waste
and organic farming.
The
report also discussed the implications of the prospective EU-Mercosur
Free Trade Agreement that is currently being negotiated between the
two regional trading blocs.
If
established, the deal would allow for free trade between the EU and
the four founding members of the South American trade region
Mercosur, including Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.
Such
an agreement, the report found, may have unintended consequences,
such as “cheaper and less carbon efficient beef from South America
will come onto the EU market.”
As
a result, in its recommendations, the Committee objected strongly to
the inclusion of beef products in the prospective bi-regional trade
deal.
However, the beef industry faces a number of issues, Mr Deering said at the launch and that no “silver bullet solutions” currently exist to address them.
The post Climate action ‘potential threat’ to beef industry appeared first on Green News Ireland.
