Farmers in West Cork get ‘Signpost’ to greener future with new programme

Teagasc believes a new scheme will help farmers to reach their climate and sustainabilty targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – crucially while maintaining farm profitability 

BY TOMMY MOYLES

TEAGASC has appointed two advisers to administer their Signpost Advisory Programme in West Cork and help farmers to reach their sustainability goals.

Anthony Dineen and John Crowley took up their roles in early June and with 31 years of experience working with farmers in West Cork, so the pair are well positioned to hit the ground running.

Recently launched, the Signpost Advisory Programme is a targeted advisory programme that will support climate and sustainability actions on farms, helping farmers to meet environmental sustainability targets.

Speaking at the West Cork launch on the Creedon family farm at Clondrohid, Teagasc regional manager, Dr Graine Hurley said: ’This is a free advisory service available to farmers across all sectors to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining and improving the profitability on their farms. 

‘The programme will provide enhanced advisory and training support to enable farmers to implement climate and sustainability actions specific to their farms. 

‘The overall aim of the programme is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030 while maintaining farm profitability.’

Placing an emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions on individual farms which will help agriculture in its bid to meet its 2030 climate targets. 

Up to now, knowledge of baseline emissions figures at farm level has been difficult to work out for farmers but thanks to the Signpost programme, a solution is at hand.

To help farmers, get a handle on their farm’s emissions, a new sustainability toolkit, AgNav, has been developed by Teagasc, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, and Bord Bia, with the support of the Department of Agriculture.

AgNav will enable farmers to gather existing data and utilise it to accurately provide the baseline figures on the emission from their farm and provide them with accurate and verifiable data to support decision making to help meet agriculture’s Climate Action.

Alongside the appointment of new advisers there are also 12 Signpost demonstration farms located right across the West Cork region.