The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine funded a desk study to scope a National Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Centre of Excellence on foot of the 2019 National Climate Action Plan. The Food Wise 2025 and Origin Green initiatives aim to increase agricultural production and value, whilst reducing the carbon footprint and enhancing sustainability. [...]

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) with a 100-year global warming potential 298 times greater than carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate that agriculture contributes about 60% of total global anthropogenic N2O emissions, mainly due to nitrogen fertiliser use and emissions from animal waste. However, N2O fluxes from agricultural [...]

What is carbon sequestration? Carbon sequestration is the biological process of transferring and storing atmospheric CO2 as part of the soil or vegetation. Terrestrial ecosystems can act as either a sink or a source of carbon. Globally, soils act as an important carbon sink and contain vast quantities of plant, animal and microbial residues in [...]

Agriculture accounts for the majority of methane (CH4) emissions in Ireland (almost 90%) due to the dominance of cattle and sheep livestock production in Irish agricultural output. These ruminant animals release CH4 as a bi-product of microbial fermentation of food in the rumen and large intestine. This process, called enteric fermentation, produces more than half [...]

The agricultural sector faces significant challenges in reducing GHG emissions in line with EU targets and maintaining food security. This dual objective must be managed in an integrated way to avoid trade-offs and optimise the sector’s contribution to GHG mitigation and C sequestration. Integrated land management is a coherent approach that incentivises increased food production [...]

In order to improve national GHG reporting and reduce the emissions profile of the agricultural sector, more refined emission factors and flexible inventories are urgently required. AGRI-I has adopted a twin measurement and modelling approach which will facilitate a move towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 country-specific methodologies rather than using Tier 1 default values [...]

The AGRI-I projects will be implemented in five linked work packages:   WP1: Establishment, management and global outreach of the AGRI-I Consortium Partner organisations: Teagasc, AFBI, UCD, TCD, Maynooth University and University of Limerick WP Leader: Dr. Gary Lanigan (Teagasc)   WP2: Carbon sequestration in permanent pastures and arable soils Partner organisations: University of Limerick, [...]