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Introduction 

On November 18th Farm Credit conducted a workshop with twelve government stakeholders at Trinity Business School.  These expert policy makers generously donated their time to discuss the big questions surrounding how farmers should be rewarded for their climate and biodiversity efforts.  While other meetings and workshops have been held with farmers and agrifood business stakeholders, it was valuable to discover the direction of agrifood climate and biodiversity policy in Ireland and beyond. 


Meeting Summary 

The purpose of this stakeholder workshop was to identify and develop policy structures which can support carbon and biodiversity insetting in the agrifood sector.  After opening statements from involved researchers and leaders of pilot projects, participants were asked to discuss:  

  • The role of government in insetting schemes 

  • How insetting schemes should be designed to works with government supports 

  • New and existing policies which could support insetting 

Overall, participants generally agreed that government should set standards, guidelines, and long-term targets for environmental goals in insetting schemes.  Participants also suggested that government should provide continuous investment into on-farm decarbonisation although participants were not in agreement on how matching funds and/or subsidies would be disbursed.  Whether funds should be directed to farmers only to de-risk environmental practices or to both farmers and corporates to support research and development was debated.  Government was also identified as the preferred leader in terms of measurement, reporting, and verification as well as through “Brand-Ireland” marketing via environmental labelling and an enhanced Origin Green programme.  Identified existing policies which could be adapted to support insetting include the EU Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF), which could be aligned with existing Common Agriculture Policy programmes as well as the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS 3) at the national level. 

 

In the second group discussion session, participants were tasked with analysing three international approaches to carbon insetting.  These case studies included a Denmark style agricultural carbon tax, a public-private funding model to subsidise low carbon agriculture based on the California model, and an emissions trading scheme similar to the EU ETS.  

In this second session, participants thought that an agricultural carbon emissions charge would likely be politically unacceptable in an Irish setting, however the revenue recycling and intensive stakeholder engagement were identified as positive elements which could be beneficial to Irish agriculture.  A public-private subsidy model in which government matches private funding for on-farm environmental projects was thought by participants to be more suitable in the Irish context.  Such a funding model would be particularly helpful to local, community scale projects which tend to have higher participation and success rates than rigid, national agri-environment schemes.  The advantage of an emissions trading scheme for agriculture was the potential to incentivise continuous emissions reduction and a reduced administrative burden if implemented at the food processor level, but a disadvantage of an emissions trading scheme was the potential for emissions leakage if not deployed on an intergovernmental scale. 

 

Concluding Comments and Next Steps 

The workshop participants provided a wide range of viewpoints and expertise across the spectrum of public agencies.  The valuable information collected from this event will be utilised along with data collected from farmers, agri-food corporates, and agri-environmental research to develop and demonstrate the potential for larger-scale carbon and biodiversity insetting schemes which make substantial progress towards meeting environmental policy goals.  


For further information on pricing agricultural emissions and rewarding climate action in the agri-food value chain please see the following EU Commission policy document: 996c24d8-9004-4c4e-b637-60b384ae4814_en 


Edward Knapp 

 

If you have any further comments to add, please feel free to contact Dr. Cian White at CWhite4@tcd.ie or Dr. Edward Knapp at KnappE@tcd.ie. 

3 days ago

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