Oliver Moore: Mutton and hurleys to save the world
Though Matthews is Professor Emeritus of European agricultural policy at Trinity College Dublin, this is not just academic pontification, because he sits on the recently formed Climate Change Advisory Council, which is tasked with overseeing Ireland’s transition to a low carbon economy.
His point is that under new EU rules from 2020, forestry can be used as an offset, whereas now, livestock’s full emissions are not measured.
Even with beef and sheepmeat depending on EU subsidy (75% on average for livestock in Ireland, and some Border-Midlands-West areas are even more dependent) - forestry is non-competitive at present. But not after 2020.
Naturally, the livestock sector is up in arms against Matthews, saying he is unsuitable for his position on the expert panel. However, he is certainly a dispassionate political economist on European agri policy, and, without doubt, both completely neutral and an expert of the highest standard.
But it can be argued that political economists lack the sociological nuance to fully grasp rural life — and there is in fact a third way. This approach is agroforestry — given only a reference in brackets in Matthews’ recent papers. A combination of forestry and pasture, it is one of the 12 enterprises supported by the the 2014-2020 Afforestation Grant and Premium Scheme.
Agroforestry, combined with some organic farming techniques, should urgently be investigated as a possible climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy — one which could keep rural Ireland populated, vibrant, producing beef and sheepmeat, while massively increasing the number of trees on the land.
First, the organic dimension. Crop rotations, feed grown on farms, and the use of farm yard manure and clover for fertility, at a genuinely apt stocking rate, builds soil carbon and reduces the use of fossil fuels. That needs to be measured on a trial set of farms as soon as possible.
(The slightly lower stocking rate in organic is important for other EU targets, such as the water frameworks and biodiversity directives)
Agroforestry, fused with these organic approaches, could transform the carbon footprint of Irish agriculture.
In Loughgall, Northern Ireland ,there is a long running agroforestry experiment, in place since 1989 (in the Republic, there is also a new agroforestry trail in Bantry)
In Loughgall, ash trees were planted at 5m spacing, at the rate of 400 per hectare in managed ryegrass pasture (getting 160kg of nitrogen per ha). This is grazed with sheep from March to November.
Incredibly, there is no reduction in available grass to the sheep for 12 years. And around 12 years in, the ash trees come on as a crop themselves. In this set-up, they too are almost (but not quite) as productive as a woodland plantation.
Minor tweaking to compensate for the relative lag years from 11 to 14 (when the trees are bigger but not yet a crop, and when the grazing area is slightly reduced) may be needed.
The 400 trees per hectare would make a massive impact on Ireland’s GHG emissions. That’s in a ryegrass trial – imagine an organic sward with a dozen plus plants including N fixing clover?
The Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) option of greening under Pillar 1 of the CAP specifically supports agroforestry as an option.
And the crop that this new vision of farming and forestry fused would yield?
Hurleys. Irish made, Irish farmed hurleys.
What could possibly be better than fighting climate change through mutton and ash?
