UFU to discuss ‘carbon auditing’ with members of the AERA Committee

The meeting has been confirmed by AERA Chair, Diana Armstrong MLA.

She said: “It’s important that the vice of the UFU is heard on this crucially important issue.

“We are seeing far too much legislation coming from thr centre at the present time. As a result, farmers are being confronted with a tsunami of paper work and bureaucracy.

“Specifically, where carbon auditing is concerned, the matter can be progressed on a voluntary basis at an industry level.”

Armstrong added that plans by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) to tie carbon auditing to the Farm Sustainability Payment are now effectively dead, with the Ulster Unionists, DUP, SDLP and Sinn Féin all opposed.

She continued: "This proposal is finished and farming families should take some heart from that. When four parties land in the same place, the Department needs to stop and listen instead of ploughing on.

"I opposed tying carbon auditing to farm payments from the start and said so in Committee. I’m glad others have come to the same view.

"I want to be fair about this. It isn’t carbon footprinting I have a problem with. Plenty of farmers measure their emissions already and find it useful. It’s making it a condition of a payment families depend on to keep going.”

Armstrong concluded: "There’s a problem with the thing itself too. These calculators measure what comes off a farm but they don’t properly count what that farm is storing in its hedges, its trees and its soil. Farmers are being measured on half the equation.

"It’s easy to get people nodding along to a question about helping farmers be greener. It’s a different conversation when you tell them what it means on the ground, with fewer cattle, more pressure on families already facing the inheritance tax changes, and jobs going in rural towns.

"Produce less here and we’ll import more of it, from places with lower standards, with the emissions of shipping it halfway round the world on top. Nobody gains from that.

"The Department hasn’t given anybody the full picture here. The evidence base looks rushed and the detail hasn’t been thought through. Until that changes, we are not supporting carbon audits, and neither are most of the parties in this Assembly.”

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin Agriculture spokesperson, Declan McAleer, has expressed his opposition to compulsory carbon auditing for farmers describing them as unnecessary and disproportionate.

The West Tyrone MLA said:

"Proposals from the Department to make carbon auditing compulsory for farmers and making them a requirement to fully access farm support payments are very concerning.

"Introducing compulsory audits, linked to reductions in support payments, goes beyond what is required in the Climate Change Act.

"Sinn Féin support voluntary carbon auditing, education and training to help farmers improve environmental sustainability, but farmers need to be encouraged and supported by the Department to achieve that - not financially penalised.”

He continued: "Many farmers are already doing carbon auditing of their farms. This is welcome and more should be supported to do so.

"However, the Department is already collecting considerable data in relation to farm emissions including the monitoring of livestock numbers and schemes such as the soil nutrient health scheme.

"Proposals to make carbon auditing compulsory is unnecessary and disproportionate and would put a greater burden on smaller farmers.”

McAleer concluded: "Carbon auditing remains voluntary in the rest of Ireland, and this has not prevented the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) in Dublin from assessing and monitoring the carbon footprint of the agricultural sector in the south.

"Sinn Féin members of the Agriculture and Environment Committee have raised our concerns when the draft Regulations came before the AERA Committee four weeks ago, and we will continue to do so.

"These proposals if implemented would mean farmers could face reductions of 10% to 15% in Farm Sustainability Payments for failing to complete a compulsory carbon audit.

"Essential support payments should not be withheld as a penalty for compliance, in our view that goes against the principle of Just Transition which should be to support sectors to make positive change.”