Dr. Patrick Cashman

Morning David, good to be on.

Yes, so effectively in Europe since World War II, food production has been driven, food output has been driven by nitrogen supply being basically cheap and freely available so that agricultural output is driven up and when supply goes up, food prices stay down.

So that has been the model up until Putin marched into Ukraine, that has been the model that we all followed.

Yeah, so that's what the commission has a part to this proposal is that they have a fertiliser action plan that they launched in May and that part of this proposal is that they're going to try and deliver on that fertiliser action plan.

Again, what Dennis has correctly highlighted is that the money here is relatively small.

We can change everything overnight.

But we need to pick what will work in Ireland, and we need to look at what the ready-to-go solutions are.

And in Ireland, specifically, we have 90% of our land use is under grassland.

So we can actually add clovers and more clovers to that grassland.

And what that does, it reduces our dependence on imported nitrogen.

Because 78% of the atmosphere, the air around us, is nitrogen.

And these legume plants, like clover, can take that nitrogen from the air and convert it into a natural plant usable farm.

And what that does is it puts more money in the farmer's pocket, but it does an awful lot more outside the farm gate.

It adds security to our 19 billion exports, all those jobs.

And it controls, the Commissioner rightly at the front of this are highlighting food security and food prices and by having a more home produced source of nitrogen.

It controls, it maintains output and then maintains our food prices.

And this all is done in an environmentally sustainable way.

So it's done from a point of view of air quality, greenhouse gases, ammonia, and even a water quality point of view.

So it's absolutely essential.

The challenges have never been so great where we have to do more with less and have to do it in an environmentally sustainable way.