Mike Magan - The Opportunity of Climate Smart Agriculture - 14 April 2015
Channel: IIEA
Date: 2015-04-16

About the Speech:

Climate change and food security are two of the most important issues of the 21st century. Ireland has a responsibility in both areas: to be smart and effective in the way we produce higher quality food and to be responsible and diligent in tackling our greenhouse gas emissions commitments. In this speech to the IIEA-RDS Leadership Forum on Climate-Smart Agriculture, Forbes Elworthy, Chief Investment Officer of Craigmore Sustainables, will outline the greenhouse gas emissions challenge posed on dairy and beef farms globally, drawing on his direct experiences of farming and forestry practices in the UK, New Zealand and Australia. He will discuss the economic return to farmers from promoting climate-smart agriculture, focusing on afforestation strategies in particular. Mr Elworthy will be joined by Mr Mike Magan, a dairy farmer from Killashee, Co.  Longford, who will discuss the implications of Climate-Smart Agriculture from an Irish perspective and the transformative impact the end of milk quotas could have on rural Ireland.


About the Speaker:

Craigmore Sustainables is responsible for forty New Zealand farms in the dairy, sheep-beef, horticultural and forestry sectors. Since 2012, Forbes Elworthy has been working on a farmer-owned project entitled ‘Map Of Agriculture’ - a global agricultural enterprise financial returns database used for farm comparative investment and risk analysis. Brought up on Craigmore Station in the South Island of New Zealand, a property farmed by the Elworthy family since 1864, Mr. Elworthy trained in Agricultural Economics at Lincoln University in New Zealand before attending Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.