Calls for green energy music to farmers’ ears
As a result, the realisation is finally dawning on many that the salvation of our planet and not our souls is becoming the single biggest issue for all who inhabit planet Earth.
In the drive to prevent irreparable damage our response to the global warming question poses challenges for each and everyone and it also offers windows of opportunity.
Agriculture, which is already under huge pressure in Europe thanks to EU CAP reform will face further pressure as consumers become more conscious of the damage being done to the environment.
Fortunately those challenges can also present huge opportunities, one of them being the rush to find green energy, which is gathering pace.
With ethanol emerging fast as an additive to petrol the quest is already on to elevate its status as just a petrol additive to becoming fully fledged fuel in its own right.
It is still fashionable however, even in Ireland, to dismiss the process as too expensive and one US venture capitalist, who is a big fan, recently suggested that the drive to find alternative fuels will be attacked, mainly by the vested interests in the oil sector.
Despite oil prices having eased somewhat, it would be foolish to attribute the surge in oil prices in the past to close to $80 per barrel solely to greed.
Global statistics show there is no room for complacency in the search for alternatives to oil because the demand for fuel is going just one way and that is up.
Neither is all the rise in demand for fossil fuels coming from the omnivorous West or the established part of the global economy.
Petropolitics is one of the new buzz words as the likes of Russia and some South American countries such as Venezuela become more menacing about this increasingly scarce resource.
It goes without saying also that the Middle East is far more dangerous now than before the invasion of Iraq and could explode at any time, causing havoc to global oil supplies.
China is becoming a menace for quite different reasons. Right now China has roughly 33 million cars, a figure projected to grow to 130m by 2015.
Not that China is solely to blame for the situation in which we now find ourselves. The fuel situation has faced increasing pressure for decades.
Back in the 1980s we had a large unused spare capacity of about 14m barrels.
That has been cut to roughly 3m barrels, and as demand grows the amount of leverage the sector has will get even more precarious.
As this threat rumbles on Irish agriculture and food, which is heavily export driven, as food and drink sales top the €8 billion mark, face challenges and opportunities.
Recently Larry Murrin of Dawn Farm Foods highlighted the damage dearer oil costs were inflicting on the sector here.
That’s just a direct impact on the cost of food production from more expensive energy, an issue that the Government is still paying far to little attention.
Farmers are also facing fuel cost pressure while the question of shipping in foods from exotic locations is becoming an issue as airline pollution becomes the focus of growing international scrutiny.
While the issue of oil scarcity and global warming seem to be issues that are out there well away from this tiny island economy the implications for all sectors of this economy, not just food is becoming increasingly precarious.
If the ethanol question were to be given greater domestic focus it could well throw Irish farmers, a dying breed, a new lifeline.
