The 25 farmers who participated in the Inishowen Uplands European Innovation Project have been commended for their efforts by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue.
Speaking at the Inishowen Uplands EIP final conference in the Ballyliffin Hotel, at which the group launched its farmers’ handbook, the Donegal minister also paid tribute to the team that helped deliver the project.
“At the outset I want to recognise the work of John McGilloway, Henry O’Donnell, John Doherty, and all of the committee for their work to get the project through to this stage. I want to acknowledge, in particular, all 25 participating farmers who have made this scheme such a success,” Minister McConalogue said.
“The idea behind the European Partnership initiative is to trial new ideas and actions that would not have been adopted before to see how they’d work for farmers in terms of results and profitability. It’s been good to watch the scheme evolve and see the participation of the farmers in terms of their buy-in.
“I certainly hope all of you found it worthwhile, productive and a good learning process. Your learnings and the EIP schemes outcome will help to form national policy as well.
“The different things the farmers have learned through the EIP schemes can be taken on board as part of wider national schemes such as ACRES and others that will evolve over the next number of years. The aim is to incorporate what is working, scale it up and spread it out in a way that has a wider impact on more farms. Hopefully, this will provide a new way of delivering income for farmers as well,” he added.
Minister McConlaogue added that he knew from growing up on the home farm in the eighties, the impact in relation to how we farm, and the strength of nature and biodiversity has certainly been diminishing over the last generation or two.
He said that’s something we are all conscious of, and going forward we must be conscious of how we carry out work on our farms.
“Alongside having an increased understanding and appreciation of nature around us, is the imperative to keep producing food – not just here in Ireland but in other countries as well. There will be a growing demand for food over the next number of decades as we see a continuing increase in population,” Minister McConalogue added.
Pointing out that the climate in Ireland and across the world is making the production of food more difficult, he continued: “The challenge for us in Ireland is to follow through on the gifts we are fortunate to have in terms of our capacity to produce food. It’s also important that we learn to do that while making space for nature.”
The five main measures of the Inishowen Uplands EIP that was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine under the Rural Development Programme are the introduction of cattle to the uplands, agro forestry on the farm, the use of diverse swards on the farm, the use of red clover swards for fodder production on the farm, and the creation of ponds on the farm.
“I’d like to thank the farmers for stepping up and for working so collaboratively with the team over the last five years, and for producing this outcome which will help policy, not just locally, but also nationally,” Minister McConalogue said.
Pictured above: The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, pictured with Henry O’Donnell, Inishowen Uplands European Innovation Project Coordinator, and John McDaid, Inishowen Uplands European Innovation Project Manager, at the launch of the farmers’ handbook in the Ballyliffin Hotel.
