Apologies for the delay in replying to your email; however I hope this helps below. Farming in a sustainable manner is achievable across all farms with slight differences between drystock and dairy farms.

 

1.       Teagasc held a sustainable dairy conference in December and all the details are here https://www.teagasc.ie/news--events/news/2019/sustainable-dairy-farming.php

2.       Teagasc Environment Unit held a conference in November and the details are here https://www.teagasc.ie/news--events/news/2019/agrienvironmentconference.php

3.       Teagasc produced this booklet on Improving Farm Sustainability https://www.teagasc.ie/publications/2019/improving-farm-sustainability.php

4.       Teagasc Sustainability Report https://www.teagasc.ie/news--events/news/2019/sustainability-report17.php

5.       From your farm perspective see what measures you are already carrying out soil testing, nutrient management planning, liming, fertiliser plan, fertiliser use, slurry spreading, grazing season length etc

6.       Try a get someone to help you with the Carbon Navigator for each of the past few years and this may have been completed already for your home farm

7.       There is no sheep carbon navigator yet.

8.       If the home farm is in Bord Bia there is a way of getting a sustainability/carbon footprint for your farm by logging in yourselves through the Bord Bia website

9.       It might be useful if you could see how many farmers are applying the 7 steps in the Improving Farm Sustainability booklet – are we doing enough can we do more?

10.   What would farmers be willing to do for payments to help sustainability – bog word sustainability and it covers a lot of areas such as water quality, nutrient use efficiency, biodiversity all of which can increase economic sustainability

 

Hope this is of some help and kind regards,

 

Tim Hyde