EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Research Responses A range of research projects is examining the broad environmental challenges facing the agri-food sector. The EPA continues to invest significant resources into environmental research both through its own research calls and through co-funding of projects with other bodies. Since 2016, the EPA has funded 78 new research projects relevant to the Environment and Agriculture area; an investment of €15 million. These projects were funded across the three Pillars of the EPA Research Programme 2014-2020. The most recent awards in relation to agriculture are largely focused on reducing nutrient loss to water, evaluating land use and land use management in the context of soil carbon, quantifying carbon and other emissions to the atmosphere from upland burning, and identifying scenarios for carbon neutrality for the agriculture sector. In terms of water, the focus of the research is on the achievement of Water Framework Directive goals. Projects funded include identification of the pressures associated with farm roadways acting as a conduit for nutrient transport, the effect of forest management on inland waters, the exclusion of livestock from watercourses, and management of riparian buffer zones. Further information on currently funded projects and end-of-project reports are available on the EPA website. 12 Several research projects are currently examining soil carbon stocks, one with a view to creating a more robust system of reporting for national greenhouse gas emission and removal inventories for grassland and cropland; another study is examining the peatland properties influencing greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Furthermore, the National Policy Position on Climate Acton and Low Carbon Development includes a key action to develop ‘an approach to carbon neutrality in the agriculture and land-use sector, including forestry, which does not compromise capacity for sustainable food production’. In response, the EPA has recently funded a project aimed at developing scenarios in which this key action may be met. The recently published AgriBenchmark report explored the possibilities of benchmarking nutrient performance on Irish farms using data from the National Farm Survey (Murphy et al. , 2019). The results of this study suggest that there is scope to increase nutrient use efficiency. Furthermore, the study suggests that effective knowledge transfer is central to achieving potential improvements in nutrient management. 12 http://www.epa.ie/researchandeducation/research/ Through the Stimulus and CoFoRD (Programme of Competitive Forestry Research for Development) programmes, and through various joint initiatives with other state bodies and European agencies, the DAFM has strongly supported climate change research relevant to the Irish agri-food sector, committing €19 million to 25 projects that include climate change elements in 2013- 2017 alone. A number of research proposals have recently been funded in response to the DAFM Research Call 2019 under the ‘Environment & Climate Smart Approaches to Agri-Food Systems’ topic. One of these projects aims to identify mechanisms whereby the greenhouse gas and ammonia footprints of pasture-based production systems can be lowered, while another is specifically aimed at furthering our understanding of ammonia abatement techniques in an Irish context. Two further projects are investigating novel technologies for the reduction of methane emissions and developing farm sustainability tools for efficient nutrient management. In addition, the DAFM has used other transnational call processes to make awards from its funding programmes in the agri-environmental area. These include collaborative transnational partnerships in European Research Area Networks (ERA-Nets) and EU Joint Programming Initiatives. Further details are available on the DAFM website. 13 The DAFM is on the governing board of the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) and the Global Research Alliance initiative. The Global Research Alliance initiative has 56 member countries and aims to find ways in which food production can be produced without increasing greenhouse gas emissions. 13 https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/research/ 344