Michael D. Higgins has claimed the climate change and the rising cost of living will lead to “big changes in diet.”
According to The Irish Times:
Speaking at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co Laois, Mr Higgins said agriculture and food production should be embedded in a social model and “not in an economic model that is narrowly focused in relation to price inducement”.
“Everybody is going to have to change,” he said, outlining that consumers under “grave pressure” due to the cost of living crisis would have to adjust from a “cheap food policy where you have artificially reduced prices”.
He said the change was of a scale that meant it could not be simplified to consumer choices but that “there is no doubt whatsoever I think that you are going to see big changes in diet”.
The President criticised the structure of the agriculture and food production industry in Europe, including of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the “assumptions and the thinking behind it”.
He said that farmers have “relied on market inducement to do everything they’re doing”.
“They have been promoted and pushed in certain directions by the European Commission at certain times, and you cannot say that this is suddenly over. You will have to in fact manage the transition,” he said, outlining how there had to be compensation for farmers affected by climate change.
“If you are going to have farming families, for example, moving into a different relationship and with new responsibilities and they’re willing to take them, I think there has to be compensation for it.”
President Higgins said he believed the fallout from changes to Ireland’s derogation from European nitrates directives were “solvable”, and warned against a “straight confrontation” between farmers and government.
He admonished the global failure to keep to UN sustainable development goals, in particular from the permanent members of the UN Security Council. “Each and every one of them has in fact pulled back, and I think that is disastrous.”
