Suzanne Campbell

If oil companies are making $30 million an hour in windfall profits right now, could some of that money be taxed and put to use, getting us off diesel dependence?

The European Commission is thinking about a windfall tax.

Other European governments are subsidising electric tractors, but we are not.

James Nix is an expert in the economics of heavy vehicles.

He works with the think tank Environment and Transport in Brussels, but he knows his way around Irish farms.

I asked him, was Ireland behind the curve in adopting electric tractors?

Because the retail price of these tractors, at least the purely battery tractors, is eye-watering.

It would make people wince and farmers are not feeling rich at the moment.

So how...

What sort of level of support do you think is going to be needed to persuade people to take a punt on them?

Allow me to play devil's advocate here, though.

If you were sitting in the Department of Finance, might it not also equally make sense to say a wise man is just going to sit this one out and wait five, six, seven years for a secondhand market in these tractors to develop?

And then we'll jump in.

I frame this conversation as being a way of avoiding price spikes where it goes over $100 a barrel in the future.

But is that to not understand where we're going to be in the future from now on?

What do you think is going to be the baseline price here?

Is it going to go back down to $30, $40 a barrel at any point?

So we could do some of this stuff or we could just sit here and wait for the next calamity.

51551 for your thoughts.

Last weekend, a mehal took place in Oncararua with a truly international flavour.