Glanbia, the food company, have a new endorsement seal. When carried on packaging, the Truly Grass Fed seal signifies that the product was created using ingredients made by a "happy, healthy cow". I like the logo - a cow's head in a green Celtic pattern. Seriously, is there anything that doesn't look good when it's rendered in Celtic design?
Their website, of course, largely describes the Ireland where Darby O'Gill lives.
"Ireland has some of the freshest and cleanest air you can find anywhere in the world. In fact, it is one of the lowest emitters of carbon in the world and is certified by the Carbon Trust in the UK." (This might confuse many of us who are bracing ourselves for an onslaught of carbon taxes).
Being low in carbon emissions, however, doesn't mean that our air is clean, since our emissions of other greenhouse gases is rising. The Irish Times reports that emissions of three key air pollutants - ammonia, nitrogen oxides and non-methane VOCs - are getting worse. These pollutants impact on air quality, cause respiratory problems, pollute soils and surface water, and damage vegetation. The article states that, "the agriculture sector accounts for virtually all (99%) of ammonia emissions in Ireland, arising from the application of fertilisers - 40 million tonnes of animal manures are used annually, together with 300,000 tonnes of nitrogen in fertilisers."
The Truly Grass Fed website praises our reliable rainfall. "Thanks to the country's location on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and its mild climate created by the Transatlantic Gulf Stream, farms do not require mechanical irrigation. That means our farmers face no energy costs associated with watering their pastures." Presumably then, the Truly Grass Fed cows were not affected by the drought conditions this year, and will not be availing of the fodder imports being paid for by the €4.25 million in Exchequer funding recently secured by the Dept of Agriculture.
The website goes on to describe our Goldilocks temperature here in Ireland - not too hot, not too cold. Tell that to the farmers who suffered both sub-zero temperatures and drought conditions within a six-month time-frame this year. Even Greenfield Dairy Farm, the demonstration farm part-owned by Glanbia, lost two cows and six calves during the extreme snow and storm conditions experienced in March.
Here's a line that will definitely raise a few hackles. "Since Ireland is not an industrial country, we don't see the same air, soil, and water pollution that affect other parts of the world. The grass truly does grow greener here, so from farmers' pastures to their hedgerows and the surrounding areas and wildlife, we treat the earth with extraordinary respect."
The Irish Wildlife Trust would strongly disagree. IWT campaigns officer, Padraic Fogarty, calls the Origin Green programme a sham, saying that it is simply a smokescreen for 'greenwashing' the significant environmental problems which we face. "The imminent extinction of the curlew, for instance, can be directly linked to Fine Gael's massive agricultural expansion programmes, something which Origin Green does nothing to address. Marketing initiatives, such as Origin Green, significantly hinder efforts at environmental protection by creating the false impression that all is well in the countryside."
Birdwatch Ireland's assistant head of policy, Oonagh Duggan, said it had repeatedly warned the Government of the reputational risk of claiming that Irish agriculture was sustainable "when it isn't".
So, the Truly Grass Fed website is full of easy points to argue with, but there's one claim which might seem completely innocuous, yet I consider it the most important, and the one which prompted me to write this article. It's the page asserting that Irish farming is essentially regenerative agriculture.
"The idea of regenerative agriculture is nothing new across the verdant and pristine pastures of Ireland, home to Truly Grass Fed Dairy. It's how we've always done things here, and as regenerative practices trend upward, we look forward to a world where our longstanding heritage becomes the global norm."
And further on: "'Regenerative farming' is a term rarely used in Ireland because it's nothing new here. We just call it 'farming' and we are dedicated to showing the world how powerful our tradition can be for people, the planet, the cows and our customers."
Oh...really? (To be said in the voice of Dara O'Briain if possible).
Regenerative agriculture - or Regen-Ag - is certainly trending upwards around the world, that much is true. The term very specifically describes a farming and land-use method that incorporates the traditional and indigenous best-practices of farming, animal husbandry and environmental conservation, with the aim of improving soil health and fertility, increasing biodiversity and enhancing natural ecosystems, animal welfare, food nutrition and rural (especially small farmer) prosperity.
These practices include no-till, eliminating inputs (synthetic fertilisers and pesticides), using cover crops, leaving plant residue on fields after harvest, adding compost, mob-grazing and utilising diverse rotations and agroforestry techniques that combine crops, forestry and livestock into one system.
In Regen-Ag, it all starts with the soil, whether you're growing crops or pasture. Dr. Elaine Ingham is an American microbiologist, soil biology researcher and founder of SoilFoodWeb Inc. Her lecture, The Roots of your Profits, delivered at the Oxford Real Farming conference, is available to watch online. It's one and half hours long, but should be compulsory viewing for anyone involved in farming, because it explains exactly why you're wasting your time and money, as well as damaging future productivity, by adding commercial fertilisers and pesticides to your soil. She describes how focusing on soil biology instead will increase productivity. "We typically see increases in protein content of pasture grasses, which may contain only 5-6% protein. By getting this proper biology into the soil, we see increases of up to 25-26% protein."
The aim of Regen-Ag is to transition away from inputs, which is what farmers call commercial fertilisers and pesticides. For decades it has been drilled into us that you simply cannot farm successfully without these inputs, but the Regen-Ag movement is throwing all of that out the window. Steve, a New Zealand dairy farmer featured in the excellent short video, The Regenerators, says: "My fertiliser budget four years ago was a hundred thousand dollars, now it's about thirty-five thousand a year, and in ten years' time it'll be zero, because nature can do it all."
Rather than gradually decreasing their use of inputs, many Regen-Ag farmers are getting rid of them altogether, and it's hard not to see the logic when Dr Ingham talks about the beneficial microorganisms in the soil, and how they protect your plants from disease, as well as the effect that commercial inputs have on them.
"Every single inorganic fertiliser is going to be killing these organisms in the soil. Every single pesticide kills way more of the beneficial organisms than they do of the disease-causers. If you go out and nuke your soil with a pesticide, you're gonna knock down all of the organisms - the bad guys as well as the good guys - but who comes back faster? The bad guys."
Gabe Brown, a Regen-Ag farmer in North Dakota, USA, carried out an extended trial on his land, using commercial fertiliser on half of each individual field and leaving it off the other half. After four years, the halves without fertiliser consistently outperformed the other halves, so it was easy for him to decide to ditch the cost and bother of applying fertiliser.
Greenfield Farm in Kilkenny, is the demonstration farm part-owned by Glanbia. Teagasc (the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority) are also part-owners and they use the farm for advisory workshops and demonstrations. There's a workshop handout that describes how grazing paddocks should be reseeded, and on one page the various costs are listed. Soil Test, Spraying, Roundup, Ploughing and Sowing, Fertiliser, Fertiliser Spreading, Levelling, Rolling, Grass Seed, Herbicide Sprays (Alistell, Legumex, Duplosan), Spraying. There is an added note that these costs do not include post-emergence sprays.
So, pretty much the exact opposite of what Dr Elaine Ingham would advise.
Concern about fertiliser and pesticide residues on our food, as well as the impact these chemicals have on air and water quality, is growing among the general public. Concerns that have not been allayed by the recent result in a landmark case where Monsanto were found responsible for Dewayne Johnson's illness, suffering and reduced life expectancy because of the cancer-causing nature of their glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup. Said the lead counsel: "We were finally able to show the jury the secret, internal Monsanto documents proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer."
Glyphosate-based products are currently legal in Ireland but questions are arising as to whether this will remain the case. Claire Fitzsimons, from the Dept of Agriculture, has this to say: "If these products are banned, future generations will wonder why more was not done to encourage safer sustainable use. Weed licking with glyphosate-based products is a safer way to control rushes as glyphosate is relatively benign compared to other pesticides."
Did you get that? Glyphosate, which causes cancer, is considered relatively benign within the farming chemicals arsenal. Perhaps future generations will wonder why the hell we went around putting poisons all over the land at all.
Especially when an alternative like Regen-Ag, with its plethora of benefits, is available. Of all these benefits, there is one that attracts the most attention, the ability of healthy soils to sequester carbon. That is, to pull it out of the atmosphere, where it's causing so much trouble, and store it in the soil. This long-term carbon storage comes about through the creation of humus. Humification - the result of relationships between actively growing plants, fungi and other soil microbes in a matrix that includes mineral soil and organic material - builds topsoil while storing carbon in a stable form.
This carbon sequestration capability makes Regen-Ag the keystone factor in programmes like the "4 per 1000" initiative launched by the French government, which aims to boost carbon storage in agricultural soils by 0.4% each year to help mitigate climate change and increase food security.
The French dairy-to-drinks company, Danone, is joining in with this programme, as part of its drive to support regenerative agriculture. In the US, DanoneWave has launched a new soil health programme to support sustainable agriculture in its farming communities. As part of the initiative, DanoneWave will commit up to $6 million for the research programme over the next five years.
Soil science researchers, as well as consultants at the sustainability platform EcoPractices, have partnered with DanoneWave to execute the initiative. "With all life beginning and ending in soil, there is an urgency to promote agricultural practices that can help regenerate soils. As a scientist who has conducted research in this area for the last 50 years, I am privileged to work with DanoneWave, a company that is setting an example for the private sector with a commitment to become carbon neutral," said Dr. Rattan Lal, Professor of Soil Science and Director of the University of Ohio's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center. "The support of the private sector will ensure we can make changes on a significant scale. I hope that others will be inspired by this work and consider options for becoming involved."
If you do any reading at all on the subject of soil science, you'll keep coming across a handful of names, and Dr. Rattan Lal is one of them. This guy is A-list, which means that Regen-Ag is really being taken seriously by companies in the private sector.
Healthy soil is being talked about in political circles too, in some countries at least. An article from Regeneration International describes the candidates wielding their soil-health credentials:
"Alexis Baden-Mayer, director of Citizens Regeneration Lobby, notes that the roster of traditional farm issues, such as the regulation of pesticides and fertiliser runoff, has expanded this political season to include recognition of agriculture's role as the only sector of the economy poised to reverse climate change. 'One of the most exciting aspects of regenerative agriculture is how quickly this climate mitigation tool can be "switched on." Farmers and ranchers can, within a few years, transition to land management practices that make their farms not just carbon-neutral but carbon-negative, sequestering more CO2 than is emitted. The remarkable potential of agriculture to sequester literally billions of tons of carbon annually offers a much needed glimmer of hope on the climate front.'"
So you can't blame Glanbia for wanting to claim that, here in Ireland, we're all practising Regen-Ag too.
Here's the problem with that though. I've been reading about Regen-Ag for a few months. I've watched a few videos and I've visited one Irish Regen-Ag farmer. I'm not an expert, in other words, but even I know enough by now to recognise whether a farm is practising Regen-Ag or not.
So going around saying that Irish farming is pretty much the same as regenerative agriculture isn't actually doing us any favours. It won't fool anyone and it probably makes us look a bit stupid.
Most of all though, it hurts the farmers. Regen-Ag is the most exciting thing happening in farming. It provides resilience against unstable weather conditions, it maximises yield and minimises loss, it cleans up air and water and it sequesters carbon. But it only does all those things if you're actually doing it. Which is unlikely to happen if your farm advisor is telling you that, ah shure, you're already basically doing it, more or less.
The only problem with Regen-Ag is that it doesn't make a profit...oh, except for the farmer. You get rid of your commercial inputs so the fertiliser and pesticide companies lose out. You aim to reduce machinery impact and let animals and the soil do the work, so tractor companies lose out. You increase the percentage of direct plant feed for livestock - as well as raising the protein content of that plant food - so feed companies lose out.
One has to wonder how much this contributes to the fact that Regen-Ag is not being shouted from the rooftops as the way forward in Irish farming. Organic farming is already given minimal coverage in Ireland, so any farmer who wants to transition to Regen-Ag is probably going to be doing it on their own. There are trailblazers doing it, but Regen-Ag as the mainstream Irish farming method is still a long way off.
Meanwhile, farmers struggle on.
A dairy farmer, writing in the Irish Farmer's Journal, has this to say:
"When I think about it, from then until summer 2018, every conference, meeting, pamphlet and conversation has had dairy expansion as a byline and all fuelled by Food Harvest 2020 visions. I say until summer 2018 because that was when I attended a Dept of Agriculture conference titled, 'Sustainability Dialogue' and it slowly dawned that the Titanic needed to change direction..."
"Have I attended eight years of dairy conferences and meetings and ignored the environmental messages that were given? No. They simply were not mentioned."
"Farmers simply cannot bear the brunt of this goalpost shift as battling the coal front of weather extremes while keeping heads above water is mentally, physically and financially exhausting at best...what happens when regulatory bodies have already decided that climate change and emissions are to be prioritised while the conversation on the ground is still surrounding expansion?"
There are concerns that the Irish farming population is growing older, with not enough young farmers entering the sector. Young people are incredibly savvy about climate, environment, energy and fossil fuels nowadays. They have to be. For them, climate-change is not just a conference subject or a fringe interest, it is something that will directly determine how long and/or unpleasant their lifetimes are going to be.
Regen-Ag is a ferocious weapon against climate change, but this growing movement is also a wonderful opportunity to attract young people back into agriculture - a sector which is vitally important in Ireland, indeed worldwide - by presenting them with an appealing, intelligent, challenging, rewarding new model of farming.
Truly.