Darragh McCullough: Nowhere else has a more sustainable Daisy, so why should we reduce the national herd?

Research shows only about one third of the area being grazed by the Irish heard is actually ploughable

Darragh McCullough Twitter Email

November 01 2021 08:59 AM

To cull or not to cull. That is the question that will plague Irish farming for the coming decade.

Even the lower target of a 21pc cut in carbon emissions from agriculture by 2030 is wishful thinking. The vast majority of farmers haven’t adopted the basic measures that we know will reduce emissions by 10pc.

The other half of our prescribed reduction is dependent on technologies that haven’t even been developed yet. That leaves farmers with no other choice but to reduce the national herd.

This scenario is also promoted by those who believe that Ireland would produce more food if we got rid of livestock. The idea is that the land used to feed the national herd could be better utilised if it was producing human edible crops.

It’s a complicated theory to unpick, but since she’s currently in the eye of the storm, let’s start with Daisy, the typical Irish dairy cow. She needs about 1.5 acres when her calf and grain meals are included in the calculation.

When comparing the amount of human digestible food that we get from Daisy to the amount of food we could grow on the same 1.5ac, should we compare on the basis of protein or calories? Grain crops will always trump livestock on the calories that they produce per acre.

But livestock aren’t farmed for the calories they produce. It’s human edible protein that’s in demand globally, and this is the reason there’s a return from getting up every morning to milk Daisy.

So Teagasc researcher Donagh Hennessy set out to compare the amount of edible protein that could be produced on the same area that is being used to feed our livestock, including the beleaguered dairy cow.

Hennessy made sure to include not just the Irish land that Daisy grazes, but also the acres used to grow the imported grains that form part of the one tonne of meals she munches her way through in the parlour.

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The results are startling. If Daisy is culled, that land would produce less than half the amount of human edible protein. And it gets better. Daisy’s international counterparts in most other parts of the world don’t fare as well at all.

The reason lies in the fact that only about one third of the area being grazed by the Irish dairy herd is actually ploughable. If land can’t be ploughed, the best way of producing human-digestible protein from it is by getting a ruminant to convert its grass to meat and milk.

If you take this theory to its logical extreme, the most sustainable milk in Ireland is the portion coming off the most disadvantaged land that can never be ploughed. It turns a lot of the logic about where to concentrate dairy growth on its head. But combating climate change is going to revolutionise the way that we look at everything from now on.

Surprisingly, given that they dominate on marginal land, neither our suckler nor sheep fare as well as Daisy on this comparison. That’s largely because they produce less protein than the dairy cow. But they still produce more edible protein than crops if they are farmed on land that can’t be ploughed. In doing so, they are nearly three times better than their equivalents in the US.

On average, Irish ruminants consume the equivalent of 0.69kg of human edible protein for every kilo of animal protein produced.

It’s a complex theory to explain, but it’s further proof that Irish farming, in its current form, has an inherent logic to it. We have a national herd numbering close to seven million head for a good reason. Less than a third of our farmland is ploughable. The rest is only good for grazing or forestry. So culling the national herd might slash Ireland’s emissions, but we wouldn’t be able to produce the same amount of edible protein any other way. Instead, it would simply end up being produced somewhere else with an even bigger environmental cost.

As the name suggests, global warming requires a global perspective. We’ve already thrown out the baby with bathwater on the bogs now that we’ve started importing boatloads of peat to keep our horticulture sector supplied with its key input.

This perverse off-shoring risks actually increasing our national emissions.

We’ve also managed to outsource our timber requirements and damage confidence in the forestry sector while it remains tied up in officialdom’s knots.

Are we seriously contemplating doing the same with our livestock sector even though nobody else in the world has a more sustainable Daisy?

Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm enterprise in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie

Darragh McCullough: Nowhere else has a more sustainable Daisy, so why should we reduce the national herd?

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