Ireland: Climate targets without suckler herd reduction almost impossible

The chair of the Food Vision Beef and Sheep Group, Prof. Thia Hennessy believes it will be “very challenging” for the agriculture sector to meet climate targets without reducing the suckler herd. Among the recommendations in the group’s final report were voluntary diversification and extensification schemes for the beef sector. However, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue has since said that a government scheme to reduce the Irish beef herd is “off the table“. Climate Prof. Hennessy, who is the head of the Department of Food Business and Development and chair of Agri-Food Economics at Cork University Business School, told Agriland that the emissions reduction targets for the agriculture sector “are very ambitious”. “As the scientific solutions were presented to us it became more and more evident that reaching those ambitious targets without some contraction in production is going to be almost impossible,” she said. Several farming organisations ...