'That's blindly ignorant': Minister dismisses claims farmers could produce enough veg to supply the country
The idea of Ireland producing enough vegetables and grain to supply the country has been dismissed as "blindly ignorant" nonsense by the Agriculture Minister.
Michael Creed also firmly backed the beef and dairy sectors but warned that farmers will have to do their part to bring down carbon emissions.
"There is a view, which I fundamentally disagree with that we should dismantle the beef heard and get all these farmers growing potatoes and carrots. That's blindly ignorant," Mr Creed told the Irish Examiner.
Since 2008, the area planted to the main cereal crops has reduced by 67,500ha, which represents a drop of over 20%.
IFA Grain Chairman Mark Browne said: “The sector is in serious decline and a coordinated approach is required by all stakeholders in order to stabilise the sector.
“This stark reality confirms that tillage must be considered as a vulnerable sector in Irish agriculture.
"The arable sector is of major strategic importance to the broader agricultural industry as it underpins Ireland’s livestock, dairy, drinks and mushroom sectors, and the €12.6 billion in exports."
In contrast the dairy sector continues to expand and it is forecast that milk supply will increase by 300 million litres this year, bringing overall production to more than 7.8 billion litres.
This will mean that overall milk production will have increased by more than 50% since 2010. However, a big contribution to this growth is the ending of milk quotas in 2015.
The Green Party also believes that Irish agriculture is currently very dependent upon livestock farming for export. It has called for a focus on the tillage and horticulture sectors so that more Irish produce would be sold locally and this in turn would lower greenhouse gas emissions in both the production and transport of goods.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said: "We need to diversify, we are relying on beef and dairy exports. It's not serving Irish farmers and it's certainly not serving the environment and it's not reflective of what is now happening. People are moving away from such a reliance on meat."
However, Mr Creed said the focus on dairy and beef production in this country is "the reality" and the Government would not be stipulating what type of agriculture farmers engage in.
"We are not in the business of prescribing," he said. "You can rail against this, but farming has become specialised. You have tillage farmers, you have livestock farmers, you have dairy farmers, you have the pig industry and you have the horticulture sector and we support the horticulture sector very significantly.
"But it is true you don't get many farms, if at all now, of the type that you had when I was growing up. As a child on a farm, we had sheep, we had pigs, we had dairy and we had tillage.
"When I finished farming a number of years ago we were exclusively dairy and that's just the way the world has gone in terms of farming," said Mr Creed.
Turning to the measures that must be introduced to tackle climate change, Mr Creed said the State will not fund all of these changes.
"The State, where it can, will assist. But there will be a lot for individuals to do also and that will be down to regulation.
"We are not banking on any silver bullet.
"It will be a myriad of different actions, one of the critical ones is better management of fertilisers used, better management of slurries, better application of chemical fertilisers all those issues."
