Feeding Ourselves Gathering 2024 - Opening session

What a pleasure it was to join others in Cloughjordan today – and thanks so much to Oliver for the invitation, for the opening of the Feeding Ourselves Gathering 2024.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days – I got back late last night from Brussels, having travelled there via St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Helsinki, Tallinn, Vilnius and Riga, and then of course we had the shock news yesterday of the Taoiseach’s resignation.

In times like these we can feel a bit at sea, and I have to say that I can’t think of anywhere better to pause, reflect, reconnect - and gather to go again - than Cloughjordan, County Tipperary.

I do a lot of traveling around the country as Minister for Land Use and Biodiversity, speaking to different farmers who are trying new and different things: some of whom are doing things in a more traditional sense, in that they’re following and rediscovering practices that were mainstream before the chemical industrialisation of European agriculture; but all of whom are looking at a bigger picture, and a broader, more holistic perspective than simply chasing input costs.

I’d like to think I get a reasonably good sense of the breadth of practices across the country, and I really do think there is serious momentum building behind the agroecological movement in Ireland.

Whether you describe your system as organic, regenerative or biological farming - for me, the unifying thread that captures the essence of the momentum that I feel building around the country, is that the farmers at its vanguard are farming with an open mind.

These farmers are farming with a sense of perspective, with an understanding and a respect of their farm’s place in the natural environment. And they are farming – and innovating - in harmony with the natural environment, rather than trying to defy it.

An open mind, a willingness to innovate and try new things, to open up the farm to outside ideas, is key to building a resilient farming system. One that can produce food in a way that works with the natural constraints of the farm’s topography, and ultimately that works from a business perspective to deliver a viable income.

Resilient, profitable farming systems: This is where policy needs to lead.

And while we have made some really significant policy progress over the past number of years in Irish agriculture - be it more than doubling of the land area being farmed organically, putting hugely attractive incentives in place for agroforestry, rolling out results based payment schemes at scale, or paying farmers to sow multispecies swards and red clover to reduce their fertiliser use – we are seeing a worrying trend at the EU level of a reactionary row back on environmental policy.

At the eleventh hour it looks like the Nature Restoration Law is in grave danger, balanced on a knife edge with Hungary holding the balance of power. At the same time, farmer protests in Brussels have led to a proposed dilution of the conditionality requirements under the Common Agricultural Policy.

Farmers are rightly demanding a fair income for the absolutely vital, and hugely demanding work they do : but the way to deliver a fairer income for farmers can’t be to do away with environmental standards. That will simply lock us ever further into a system that isn’t working for farmers, and a system that isn’t working for the planet on which we live.

The direction we need to go, is to incentivise farming systems that are biologically and economically resilient, to incentivise farmers to work with nature, not against it.

I also strongly believe that we, in the agricultural sector, have a massive job on our hands to convince our most important stakeholders – consumers and taxpayers – of our worth.

The connection with the value of food, where it comes from, the care and toil that goes into producing food, has been lost.

And we have a huge challenge on our hands to rebuild that connection, to develop an understanding and appreciation among consumers of the value of locally grown food, and of short supply chains.

In a sector so dependent on public money, we also need to ensure that we are delivering a genuine public good. I don’t need to convince the audience here today of that reality, but I do think the agricultural sector more generally needs to grapple with the fact of all of those competing demands for public funds – from hospitals, to schools, to housing, you name it.

I am all for increasing farm income, but I think it’s reasonable to expect increased environmental ambition in exchange for increased farm payments. So I know that there will be farm more extensive and detailed discussion of the political landscape over the course of today, but that in a nutshell is where I am coming from and where I think we need to go.

We need to prioritise, and advocate for, policy that ensures the resilience of farm systems – both biological resilience and financial resilience. And if we want greater taxpayer funding to go towards farm payments, as farmers we are going to have to be willing to deliver for the environment in exchange for that greater funding.

I’m conscious that there’s a packed agenda for the day so I won’t go on any further other than to say thank you again for the invitation to speak today, and to wish you all the very best for the coming days.

Thank you to the other panelists and moderator, Ella McSweeney, for a broad ranging discussion on the policy aspects of 'feeding ourselves' from the local, to national to global and back to the local level.