The Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan, has said that farming “has to change” in Ireland because there has been “a loss of nature in the last 50 years that has to be reversed”.

“We’ve gone from having 500 pristine water systems down to 20. That has to change, it’s not just farming, we have to change how we do forestry."

“We have to change how we manage the rivers, we have to change how we manage our sewage systems, wastewater systems – so it’s not just farming, but it needs to change,” Minister Ryan told Agriland.

She is the undisputed queen of the ploughing in Ireland and this year Anna May McHugh celebrates 50 years as managing director of the National Ploughing Association (NPA).

In the latest edition of On the Record with Agriland she shares the secrets of her success – “be nice to people” is the motto by which she lives and why her determination has got her where she is today.

According to Anna May McHugh, despite more than 70 years with the NPA, she does not believes she “will ever give it up” and cannot wait for the 2023 National Ploughing Championships.

Sinn Féin TD, Claire Kerrane has said that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was set up to ensure food production but now seems to be “going in a different direction”.

In the latest interview in Agriland’s On the Record series, the Roscommon-Galway TD said that climate is a big focus of CAP now but that it should be a different pillar, with food production remaining the sole focus of the overall CAP.

“CAP was set up to support food production. It’s now going in a lot of other ways, particularly around environmental, whereas I really think we need to see a separate pillar in relation to that,” she told Agriland.

Transformation is needed in agriculture, the director general at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned.

Laura Burke believes that if agriculture in Ireland continues to operate the way it is currently doing, it will not meet its environmental targets.

“We can’t keep doing the same things and expect a different result and that’s the long and the short of it – so transformation is needed,” the EPA’s director general told Agriland for the ‘On the Record‘ series.

She believes the “increase in production” has had an impact on environment – not just in Ireland, but right across Europe and further afield.

n an in-depth interview with Agriland, the EPA director general said: “What is agriculture going to look like in the future so that it’s still thriving, still productive but it is not having this disproportionate impact on the environment; the sector needs to transform and we can’t keep doing the same things and expect a different result.”

She said it was not “an all or nothing” scenario for Irish farmers but there were key questions that now needed to be answered by agriculture in Ireland.

Farmers are “nearly ashamed to say they are a farmer” in 2023, according to Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway, Michael Fitzmaurice.

Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice believes Ireland “needs a completely new type of party, from the bottom up” that listens to farmers and the rural community.

In an ‘On the Record’ interview with Agriland, the TD said he believes that a new political party could be a new force for rural communities.

“Politics in Ireland is now no longer one party. I can stay as an Independent if I want, but there is one game in town and that is the programme for government when the government is being put together and that’s basically the gospel for what will be done over a five-year period,” he said.

There will be no government-backed investigation into the price farmers are paying for fertiliser in Ireland, according to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue.

The minister told Agriland‘ that fertiliser prices are “outside” of his control as minister. He said it is a “market issue”.

“It’s important that farmers do plan and prepare in that regard. We want to see market returns being returned to farmers, it is something that is outside of my control as minister, there is no point in saying anything else,” the minister stated.