McConalogue announces €2.7 million funding to expand the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory

Data collected by the Observatory will underpin the development of a carbon farming model that aims to reward actions that remove carbon and store it in our soils

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue announced over €2.7 million in funding for the expansion of the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory (NASCO) today (Monday). This investment will facilitate the purchase of additional greenhouse gas monitoring equipment to increase the range and type of soils and land uses monitored through the Observatory.

Minister McConalogue said:

“Today’s investment of more than €2.7 million funding to expand the

National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory reaffirms my commitment to provide the research and data needed to underpin the development of a carbon farming model that targets and rewards actions that remove carbon and store it in our soils. Our strategic investment in this technology will benefit Irish agriculture and society at large through the better understanding of our greenhouse gas emissions and the highlighting of pathways through which we can achieve significant emission reductions.”

Minister McConalogue added:

“Carbon farming is an area that will become a crucial part of the future of farming in this country. This will be an opportunity for our farmers to derive a new income stream for their farm. To reward our farmers for the actions they take to remove and store carbon in our soils, forests, grasslands, croplands and hedgerows, a well-functioning Carbon Farming framework that provides confidence, verification and certification is essential.

“I have recently established a Working Group, chaired by officials from my department with expertise drawn from across government, to examine the key elements of an Enabling Carbon Farming Framework. Key areas which this group will focus on, amongst others, include identifying existing knowledge relevant to the establishment of baseline data, making recommendations for pathways to address knowledge gaps, assessing future auditing requirements, the development of voluntary carbon codes, examining the possibility to leverage private financing through public/private partnerships, and the identification of best practice governance structures.”

Minister McConalogue and Senator Pippa Hackett, Minister of State for Land use and Biodiversity, also welcomed the recent publication by the European Commission of its policy paper, Sustainable Carbon Cycles ’.

This communication highlights the importance of the development and deployment at scale of carbon removal solutions, both technical and land-based, as indispensable to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.

Carbon Farming as a nature-based solution is seen as a key to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester/store atmospheric carbon.

Minister Hackett commented:

“This publication gives clarity to a number of areas of importance to farmers, landowners and foresters alike who have been calling for the establishment of initiatives which support their participation in voluntary carbon markets. My Department has for a number of years been involved in similar initiatives under the Woodland Environmental Fund and Agroforestry Scheme and we can clearly see the benefit to both participant and government of incentivising not only on-farm tree planting but a broad range of carbon farming practices”.

Teagasc, on behalf of the Department, has commenced intensive monitoring of carbon emissions and removals across a range of Irish soils, putting Ireland at the forefront internationally in terms of understanding, supporting and rewarding farmers for practices that build carbon stores in our soils.

Dr Karl Richards, Head of Environment, Soils and Land-Use Research Department at Teagasc, stated that:

“The expansion of the Carbon Observatory will provide the research community in Ireland with cutting-edge research facilities to better refine agricultural emissions and identify new mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will place Ireland at the forefront of EU carbon sequestration research.”