Sir, – The article "Dairy and livestock farms in Ireland can be compared to oil production" (Science, September 1st) contained much that was interesting but I believe it was unbalanced and unfair on Irish dairy producers.
Indeed, the whole article was undermined by an inability to grasp the core environmental calculation that utterly invalidates any kind of comparison between dairy and oil.
I’m sure that I’m not the only person who was surprised by the article’s omission of this absolutely key factor that disqualifies any comparison between the two.
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has highlighted it as a fundamental discrepancy for several years now, and it has been explained and expounded upon by some economists, most notably Colm McCarthy.
When I produce milk on my farm in Kilkenny and supply it to my co-op which, for instance, converts it to a dairy powder and exports that to Saudi Arabia, then all the emissions involved in producing that milk are attributed to Ireland. It is the producer’s account that is debited for the emissions’ “cost”. The Saudis are not “billed” for the environmental cost of producing the dairy they have consumed.
Those same Saudis extract and process oil which they, in turn, send to Ireland. But here the carbon cost of the commodity falls on the consumer. Ireland’s consumption of Saudi Arabian oil is, in terms of overall emissions, billed to Ireland.
The carbon cost of Ireland’s production of milk for export to Saudi Arabia is billed to Ireland, but Ireland’s consumption of oil produced in Saudi Arabia is also billed to Ireland.
It’s possible that The Irish Times thinks that my cows out in my field in Kilkenny are as environmentally destructive as flaring oil fields scattered throughout the word’s deserts and oceans. I reject this, and I think that it is very odd that the carbon cost of grass-based milk falls on the producer, but the carbon cost of ruinously extractive oil does not. It is this “heads I win, tails you lose” carbon calculation anomaly that disqualifies even the most ardent attempts to make the kind of shaky comparison attempted in the article.
You are on much firmer ground when you broach the subject of the incalculable economic and environmental damage done by the “cheap food” policy foisted on us by retail and processing corporations and left unquestioned by politicians who must know that it is the single biggest obstacle to sustainability, but who run for the hills the instant the corporate lobbyists murmur about the dangers of food-price inflation.
That’s probably why I don’t think I’ll ever see a headline in The Irish Times along the lines of “Corporate retail in Ireland can be compared to oil production”. – Yours, etc,
DENIS DRENNAN,
Chairman,
ICMSA Farm and
Rural Affairs Committee,
Limerick.