t’s a bit like asking a farmer what his mother looks like naked. It’s not something they ever want to think about, but they’ve a fair idea if push came to shove.
Most dairy farmers have privately resigned themselves to the fact that the free-for-all since quotas were abolished in 2015 isn’t going to last forever.
The concentration of declining water quality in river catchments most closely associated with the massive increase in milk production over the last six years is the clearest sign yet that Irish farmers can’t be allowed expand the national herd much more.
Granted, there’s plenty of measures that can be implemented at farm level to improve this. Reshaping laneways, longer closed periods and axing soiled water spreading will all help. But fixing water quality doesn’t fix the ag sector’s environmental problems.
The separate, but connected, issue of climate change also has to be dealt with. Farmers will correctly point out that limiting emissions from Irish agriculture will simply export those emissions somewhere else.
Just because someone else continues to screw the planet doesn’t make it right for us to throw our hands in the air and carry on regardless. This is the driver behind Ireland’s commitment to a 50pc reduction in emissions in the next nine years, and a net-zero scenario by 2050.
So back to the opening question. If a limit is imposed on Irish agriculture’s emissions, what form will it take?
Professor Alan Matthews has done a lot of thinking on this and I like his non-partisan, economics-based approach.
He notes that the biggest source of emissions is the national cattle herd and, specifically, the dairy herd due to the higher intensity of output that is associated with these farms.
The emissions come in various forms, such as carbon dioxide from the vast array of inputs from fertilisers to meal to chemical sprays — nitrous oxide mainly from fertiliser spreading and methane from good old-fashioned belching and slurry.
While everybody talks about carbon footprints, it is probably methane emissions that are easiest to quantify on an Irish farm and, crucially, most impactful.
Remember, methane has 28 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Now imagine if the current methane output was calculated for every farmer. It would be similar to the apps and desktop exercises many farmers have done for their carbon calculator for Bord Bia. Let’s call this figure for each farmer their methane quota.
If the Government then offered to buy out methane quotas from farmers looking to scale back or retire, it would immediately put a value on these quotas.
Farmers looking to expand would have to buy methane emission rights for any extra animals they want.
The value of a methane quota would be initially determined by the value of a carbon credit. Prof Matthews has suggested putting carbon at €30/t, which would value methane at €840/t.
A dairy cow produces about 133kg of methane annually, while a bullock produces about 54kg. This would mean that a dairy farmer would have to cough up about €112 for the privilege of owning an extra cow. That works out at just over 2c per litre.
When you think of the similar investments that dairy farmers have made in stainless steel to process all the extra milk in recent years, you can see how the ambitious ones will be willing to buy into a quota like this if it guaranteed their livelihoods.
On the other hand, the retiring livestock farmer gets a nice golden handshake courtesy of their new methane quota.
Why would the Government bother coughing up the hundreds of millions that this would end up costing? Because it would probably be cheaper than any other way of meeting our commitment to reduce emissions by 50pc by 2030.
Putting a value on the emissions would also ensure farmers and researchers would continue to invest in new ways to reduce emissions through anaerobic digesters for example.
That way, innovative farming still has the possibility of growth in the future, but only if it is profitable enough to afford it.
The Government can dial up or down the price it sets for buying back methane quotas in order to ensure it is still hitting its target of removing enough emissions from the system annually.
In practice, they would be bidding against dairy farmers for the quota. The latter will strive to continue increasing output until it’s not profitable to do so.
Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm enterprise in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie