Here is a extract from a submission I made to the Citizen’s Assembly last week in relation to Climate Change.
“The 2016 State of Food and Agriculture report, published by United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), calls for “deep transformations in agriculture and food systems” to avert the threat that up to 122 million more people worldwide could be living in extreme poverty by 2030 because of climate change https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/oct/17/climate-change-could-drive-122m-more-people-into-extreme-poverty-by-2030-un-united-nations-report. 
Climate change will cause world food production to become increasingly volatile and threatens Ireland’s Food Security. As an island nation, we are especially vulnerable to food “shocks” when there are crop failures such as in 2008 when 42 countries banned food exports to ensure food for their own populations and when there are problems with transport such as those that occurred in Calais in 2015 that caused a shortage of fruit and vegetables on supermarket shelves.
In Ireland, we need to conduct a radical review of our national food security policy and transform our agriculture industry to meet the challenges of climate change and feeding our people. One of the ways we can do this is to increase the amount of agricultural land devoted to growing fruit and vegetables. Such a change would lower the greenhouse gas emissions of the agriculture industry and as horticulture is highly labour intensive it would deliver much need employment to rural areas. Bord Bia estimates that horticulture contributed €479m to the Irish economy in 2016.
Much of the fruit and vegetables imported into Ireland could be grown here. In addition, given the new recommendations by the Department of Health that we should each eat 7 portions of fruit or vegetables per day and that we currently only consume a third of this, increasing our production of fresh produce will enable us to fight climate change, obesity and improve the health of the nation.
