General election 2020 (5 Viewers)

Are these statements true?

The majority of Irish cow pasture is held by a handful of massive farming groups / consortia.

All cow farming in Ireland is subsidized.

The subsidies are base per head of cattle.

I guess my point is Ireland has wrecked ~all their forestry, is creating dairy / beef in excess of demand leading to subsidies to make it a viable product, and all of this is causing environmental damage. At what point would it be cheaper to stop the cow subsidies, and increase the native forestry subsidies to the level that smaller farmers could transition their land back to that?

Keep in mind that I'm not only a Jackeen / west brit / southsider prick, I'm now an American on top of it all, so know strictly fuck all about farming and the cows and stuff.
 
Are these statements true?

The majority of Irish cow pasture is held by a handful of massive farming groups / consortia.

All cow farming in Ireland is subsidized.

The subsidies are base per head of cattle.

I guess my point is Ireland has wrecked ~all their forestry, is creating dairy / beef in excess of demand leading to subsidies to make it a viable product, and all of this is causing environmental damage. At what point would it be cheaper to stop the cow subsidies, and increase the native forestry subsidies to the level that smaller farmers could transition their land back to that?

Keep in mind that I'm not only a Jackeen / west brit / southsider prick, I'm now an American on top of it all, so know strictly fuck all about farming and the cows and stuff.
Yes, it's not sustainable on many, many levels.


The solutions are relatively simple imho, the political fight is very hard though.
 
Yes, it's not sustainable on many, many levels.


Like, farming is a pain in the hole. You'd think they'd just take the tree option if it was anywhere close to financially comparable at the end of the day.

Since the entire thing is propped up by subsidies anyway, what's the issue?

Stupid country people. I'll fucking sort this shit out.
 
Like, farming is a pain in the hole. You'd think they'd just take the tree option if it was anywhere close to financially comparable at the end of the day.

Since the entire thing is propped up by subsidies anyway, what's the issue?

Stupid country people. I'll fucking sort this shit out.
Honestly i'd imagine most would be in favour. Something here about licensing holding it back, I don't know if it's the main issue or not:


I can talk a fair bit about the macro problems but I don't know about Ireland in general.

@egg_ you know more about this kind of thing, any chance you could enlighten us?
 
Not a subscriber to the IT, so can't read the above, but looked it up

Afforestation - legal requirements - Teagasc | Agriculture and Food Development Authority

You need an afforestation licence to plant more than 0.1 hectares of trees, but from what I can see at that link you just need to fill out a form and pay 20 quid. When we briefly kept a few sheep years ago we had to get a herd number, so I very much doubt that a little bit of form-filling like this is what puts farmers off.
 
Hmm, ok.

Regulation rather than licensing is a much more streamlined way to promote environmental aims
Erm ... what? Licensing is regulation

Anyway - I don't know the ins and outs of this, and there could well be a case for changing the licensing regime, but I'd strongly suspect this is just yer usual economist talking out his hole and asserting that less state involvement will magically fix everything
 
Hmm, ok.


Erm ... what? Licensing is regulation

Anyway - I don't know the ins and outs of this, and there could well be a case for changing the licensing regime, but I'd strongly suspect this is just yer usual economist talking out his hole and asserting that less state involvement will magically fix everything
I think he's saying with forestry you have to apply for a licence and wait around for objections while with cow farming you can just start doing it and they will do checks on you to ensure you are keeping up with regulations.

I say that with absolute ignorance of the sectors but just reading that article. Licenses appear to be a big forestry stumbling block at the moment reading a bit further into it:

 
also, 'planting trees is good for CO2' can, and frequently has been, counterproductive. cos often they're planted on bogland and that releases more CO2 than the trees suck up.
 
also, 'planting trees is good for CO2' can, and frequently has been, counterproductive. cos often they're planted on bogland and that releases more CO2 than the trees suck up.

I'm not sure I believe that on the whole.

I'd maybe believe that you can contrive some weird niche scenario, where there's a special series of events that could occur that somehow results in there being a net output of C into the atmosphere rather than into the ground.
As in, this is the sort of study that takes the absolute worst case, and multiplies it by the worst case; like draining bogs to plant Scots Pine, and then harvesting for some thing after a few years.


But for 99%+ of the scenarios I'd be guessing that swapping pasture for native forest, and leaving that forest (eg not planting manky pines and harvesting them after 4 years) is going to be pulling carbon out of the air.
 
I guess my point is: we're propping up this farming industry with grants, which is generating stuff that we don't want, and is actively damaging the country.

We've got this way of thinking that we must generate vast amounts of meat and dairy, regardless of cost or demand. And then we're building this artificial economy on that.

On the other hand you've got native forestry, which actively undoes the damage from farming, and produces stuff we want, eg diversity and lower CO2.
 
I think he's saying with forestry you have to apply for a licence and wait around for objections while with cow farming you can just start doing it and they will do checks on you to ensure you are keeping up with regulations
I very much doubt that's true of "cow farming".

(btw now that you're a culshie you're gonna have to start distinguishing between beef and dairy)
 
I very much doubt that's true of "cow farming".

(btw now that you're a culshie you're gonna have to start distinguishing between beef and dairy)
lol yeah true. I mean, i'm a vegetarian who doesn't care about GAA so it's not like i'm not doomed already. I'll just have to rely on my wit and charm.
 
I dunno anything about cattle but and I could be wrong about the rest of this too but I think there is a relatively low entry bar for forestry at present. There might be some red tape to get through but you get free money to cover all of the set up costs. Higher grants for native trees etc. The catch is you have to commit to it long term, like 20 years or something. If you take the money and cut all down to graze cattle in a year or two they'll come looking for the money back. I think you have to pay for maintenance and chopping and stuff yourself but all going well you get plenty of money for the timber.
 
Forestry as an industry or forests for the sake of natural areas and "rewilding" ? I think the view of forests as a crop is generally frowned upon by environmentalists despite wood been needed for many industries. Coillte probably views itself as more of an industry provider than a caretaker of national parks although it's both really. "Ireland destroyed it's forests" hhmmm historically I think some Irish forests were destroyed because they were considered hideouts for rebels or there was large demand for wood after the the fire of 1666 and ship building etc ?
 

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