In March, 2024 James O’Donovan of the Vegan Society of Ireland gave a talk to Independent Left on the need for a vegan transition of agriculture in Ireland. With his permission we share the transcript of this compelling presentation.

Thanks a million to Independent Left for the invite. My name is James O’Donovan, I’m from Cork, originally. I’ve been kind of vegan for about 13 years now, a devout veggie 20 years before that. I’m interested in justice issues, other species, and certainly humans thriving. I have some slides that I’ll work through.

Myself and Bronwyn Slater, who runs the Irish Vegan website, set up Vegan Sustainability Magazine in 2015 or so, and we’ve been running that, but recently we’ve got involved now with the Vegan Society of Ireland, which is a registered charity. I plan to kind of focus on that a bit more moving forward. Of course, we know we don’t live in a vegan world.

Meat consumption has increased radically since 1960s with the industrialization of food systems. That created a kind of a unique problem of having huge surpluses of food. And one of the main ways then to make use of those surpluses was to use those surpluses to feed animals. And then also there was subsidies. So the price of meat and dairy products became less. And then with all the marketing and so forth, you had a increased consumption.

In some countries in Europe now it is starting to decline. That’s meat consumption there per capita.

And this is dairy consumption for different countries. Like you can see, of course, we know China gets lots of the milk powder, baby milk powder, but still their dairy consumption is extremely low, but they’re huge… You can see on the previous one, they went from almost no meat consumption in 1960s up to 60 kilos per person. And when a billion people do that, it has a big effect.

European consumption, meat consumption, it’s a problem everywhere. But still today, 82% of all food calories come from plant-based food sources. So there’s different issues with the food system. You often hear people say the food system is broken. But at the same time, food is being provided to a lot of people, more people than ever before. Food price volatility, like in Ireland, there was very significant food inflation over the last two, three years. At the same time, the supermarkets made huge profits in that time. So a lot of that food price inflation, a lot of it, is artificial. Certainly some of it was driven by energy prices, skyrocketing, fertilizer and so on. But a lot of it is also driven by speculation. There’s intense worker exploitation and even human trafficking in the meat processing and fishing industries in Ireland. And then there’s other global issues. This is just touching some of the issues.

And quite a few of these you’ve mentioned in your article How Farming Must Change. So obviously, the farmers, they’re getting quite a small proportion of the food system total. So you have got all these other industries: chemical industries, veterinary medicines, cages, equipment, everything, all involved in the food system. Agricultural policy and subsidies play a substantial role. And just in terms of why a plant-based food system: environmental impacts is a key one, but I think probably human health impacts and other things I haven’t listed here. So climate change, increasing demand in countries like Ireland, agriculture is just about 2% of GDP. So sometimes we think it’s a huge sector, but when you take all the services into account, it’s not a huge part of the sector in Europe anyway.

The earth is a living system, an integrated system. This model just looks at different planetary boundaries. For example land use change, fresh water change. This down the bottom there is nutrients, phosphorus, and nitrogen. That comes from fertilizer and animal manure. And then this is biodiversity, this is climate change. And this is a recently one, novel entity. That’s all the kind of new chemicals that have been put into the environment, whether it’s pesticides, medicines, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, et cetera, all those different substances. They’re also having an impact. Out of these nine planetary boundaries, the food system is the key driver in four of them, and also major in two or three of the other ones as well.

There’s a safe operating space, but at the same time… there is a version of this graphic that superimposes doughnut economics on it because obviously there’s lots of people who don’t have enough resources to meet their social needs, so to address poverty, et cetera and so on. Additional resources are needed by some people and less by others. You could talk about that for a while. Biodiversity loss, really agriculture and fishing are the leading cause. They cause about 60 to 80% of biodiversity loss for let’s say fish, vertebrates, birds, amphibians, and agriculture also has a huge impact on invertebrates; all the insects. It’s huge. It’s by far the biggest driver for biodiversity loss. And it’s just because it does that, it just changes natural ecosystems to a pattern like this.

Now, this is in Ireland, just from Google Maps in Ireland, where it’s grass predominantly on the vast majority of the agricultural land in Ireland, probably about 90% of the agricultural land is for grazing. The biodiversity basically has gone there. 90 to 95% of the biodiversity would be gone. Of course there is some biodiversity in the hedgerows and so forth, but it’s completely altered to a natural ecosystem. Industrial fishing is taking place on more than half the ocean. Now, when we’re talking about a plant-based food system, I always try to make clear that I’m just talking about the European context. Unfortunately, one of the things that’s happening in places like West Africa is you’ve got long-distance industrial fishing fleets from China all the way over off West Africa. They have governmental agreements with Senegal and other countries to fish there.

Then they built fish processing, fish meal and fish oil plants along the coast there. And then they vacuum up the fish there, convert them to fish meal and fish oil, send the fish meal and fish oil up to Norway and Scotland and Ireland for feeding our salmon, our carnivorous-farmed fish. And then the local artisanal fishers, their catches are collapsing in those countries and they don’t really have other options. There are multiple examples like that impacting different peoples all over the world. Whether it’s land use changes in South America for Asian feed and European feed for farmed animals.

So we produce more than enough food. Sometimes people have this important question: do we have enough food? Do we produce enough food? We feed over a million tons. It’s hard to get a sense of a million tons. Ireland’s total grain and bean imports for farmed animals comes to about 5 million tons. We import about three and a half and produce one and a half. But globally, we feed over a thousand million tons to chickens and pigs and dairy cows and cattle and fish. This shows how much crops are produced in terms of calories per person, per day. We produce nearly 6,000 calories per person, per day, of food. And let’s see, the World Health Organization says average per person need daily is about 2,300 calories. So we produce a lot of food.

We have different losses; harvest losses, post-harvest losses, non-food use, et cetera, distribution losses. We have food waste amounting to 1,329 kilo calories for every person in the world per day. That’s a lot of food waste. And then here you see these are edible crops fed to farmed animals. So about 1,700 kilo calories per every person on the planet per day is converted to 594 calories. But also, this 3,912 is combined with 1,700 to give this 594. All of that grass pasture, alfalfa, stover (which is the stalks after the grain is harvested), all of that covers huge areas of land and has eliminated biodiversity. And all of that then produces this meat, dairy and fish: 594 calories per person per day. Does that make sense?

We produce loads of food. All of this grass and pasture takes a huge amount of land. If we just ate the food calories ourselves, we could return a lot of that land to ecosystems. In Ireland, on a hectare of land, we can produce 11 tons per hectare of winter wheat or nine to nine-and-a-half, tons per hectare of winter oats or nine to ten tons per hectare of barley. On a hectare of land in Ireland, you produce about 400 kilograms of beef. So there’s a huge productivity difference between plant-based crops and meat-based crops. And that’s why it varies from species to species.

This slide shows the amount of feed for edible weight gain for chicken, pork, and beef. For every 25 kilograms of food that a cow eats, you get one kilogram of meat from the cow. Or for every 10 kilograms a pig eats, you get one kilogram. So that’s why so much land is needed for meat production. Just that feed conversion ratio, that’s what drives the land use.

Now in Ireland, there’ve been quite a few articles on the mistreatment of workers because lots of workers in Irish meat processing plants or slaughterhouses or whatever, they’re not permanent workers, they’re considered to be self-employed. And there has been a lot of exploitation of workers and that’s been documented in the media, particularly in the UK Guardian. But there’s also some research out of Maynooth University on that issue, both in the processing plants as well as in the fishing industry.

Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by three quarters. And in Ireland, there is an opportunity. Ireland’s land is the way it is because of our being colonized and our history. Ireland’s current land use pattern is the same now, nearly the same, as it was in 1850, except forestry has gone from about 1% to 11%. The ecosystems in Ireland are some of the poorest quality of any country in the world, actually.

In the ocean, one of the solutions to establish marine protected areas. Now in Ireland, the Fair Seas campaign are calling for 30% to be established. But unfortunately, they’re only calling for 10% to be no-take zones. So Enric Sala, he’s with National Geographic, and his recommendation is that when you have a marine-protected area, it should be a no-take zone. Obviously, all of that has to be negotiated, but the Irish government have been very slow really in implementing those marine-protected areas.

A vegan food system reduces agricultural land use, potentially hugely. Meat, dairy and eggs produce 25% of Europe’s total greenhouse gas emissions. All of that industrial fishing provides very few calories per person, per day. But there are communities who depend on fishing, so we’re not speaking about their situation. A vegan food system could feed additional people because we would stop just the extreme waste of feeding farmed animals. And right now, Ireland and the EU are net food calorie consumers. All the farms in Ireland and Europe, because we’re importing so much feed from outside of the European Union, the quantity of calories that we import is more than the total food calories we produce.

Mostly, we export meat products as well as other food products. They have a much higher value than the grain and legume imports. And so economically, it makes sense. But from a food security perspective, it doesn’t make sense. And a vegan food system has significant potential both to reduce our current emissions as well as if ecosystems could be restored, potentially, they could sequester significant amounts of greenhouse gases. That was a little bit just on why it is obvious to stop causing harm to other sentient living beings. That’s the main reason to go vegan. But then you need a whole lot of other arguments because that doesn’t work for everybody.

Future Prospects for a Vegan Transition in Ireland

Because there are so many companies making so much money out of the food system, nobody wants things to change. Everybody contests the food system, with different arguments being put forward. Misinformation, lobbying, they’re all very substantial. The slide here is just a model for looking at why it’s difficult to change food systems. People talk about lock-ins, with different lock-ins in a particular system. In Ireland, for example, we’ll take a look now at the income of Irish farmers.

Certainly, there are some Irish farmers caught in poverty; they have very low incomes. Some of them of course have incomes from other work, but some farmers don’t. There’s a concentration of power. That includes things like politics, lobbying, the banks, RTE in terms of media. Now there have been some good programs like Planda go Pláta recently on TG4 as well as other programs. But programs like Ear to the Ground, programs like RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday mornings at eight o’clock, they all normalize the current system, make it seem efficient, make it seem biodiversity-friendly even.

And then you’ve got institutional lock-ins. So you’ve got organizations like the Department of Agriculture, Bord Bia. You’ve got Teagasc and agricultural research lock-in. As well you’ve got the universities. So all of those institutions, they’re supporting, they’re training future food scientists and farmers and so on, to support this food system. So when you’re trying to shift a food system, you have to look at trying to address some of those imbalances, reshape them or redirect them. Now, in Europe, the food system, agriculture is just one part of the food system. So then you’ve got processing, and then you’ve got retailing, and then you’ve got food service; restaurants and so on. So you’ve got about 9.1 million farms in Europe. You’ve got 300,000 food processing facilities. 1.1 million retail, etc. 1.5 million restaurants. There’s the employment, and there’s the value added.

Now, if we change protein production in Europe to plant-based proteins, we’re not looking to change the whole food system. We’re just looking to move from extremely inefficient and wasteful and polluting meat production to plant-based proteins. We’re still going to need food processors. Obviously, we won’t need, thankfully, slaughterhouses anymore. But we’re still going to have retailing, we’re still going to have food service activities. Now, of course there’s a critique of let’s say the supermarket system or whatever. There’s all these different elements in it, but mostly when we’re focusing on food system change, we’re focusing on transitioning away from hurting and harming animals. That’s where most intense suffering is happening, they’re suffering the most, you could say, in this system.

And so lots of the other facilities, they’re not going to change unless there’s other social changes in society. This slide shows, in one particular quarter, this just shows the GDP output of these different sectors in the Irish economy. You can see that industry excluding construction, in one quarter it’s about 50 billion. You see all the different sectors, and agriculture and fishing is just down here in that particular quarter, maybe quarter four is a slow one because the total GDP in a year is over 10 billion from agriculture. But it’s important to keep in mind that agriculture isn’t a gigantic sector.

The next just few slides are just to look at the National Farm Survey, which is produced by Teagasc for many years. In 2018, I was looking at it, and in 2018 there was 92,000 large farms that had an income over 8,000 euros. And I just noticed today in 2023, that’s dropped now to 85,000 large farms. So that’s roughly on about 4 million hectares. Now we have 47,000 small farms and they all, in general, operate at a loss of about 2000 euros a year according to the last survey. But they get a subsidy of 5,000 euros a year. So they have an income of about 3000 euros a year.

This shows the number of these large farms. So we’re only talking about large farms now. Often you’ll hear this number of, we have 130,000 farms, but nearly 50,000 of them are those tiny farms that make no money, basically. Then we have these other farms. You can see cattle rearing, cattle other, and sheep make up more than 70% of the farms. These three sectors make up more than 70% of the farms. Dairy makes up 15,000 farms, and tillage 6,000. Then when you look at the income of these 70% of the farms, you see it’s below 20,000 euros, and that’s after getting a large subsidy. Now, last year because of the war in Ukraine, there were no vegetable oils available. So the price of dairy fats went very, very high. And so dairy farmers had a 50% increase in incomes. It’s expected to drop close back down to here this year.

The point is, tillage farmers are very keen to drive diversification, to move into different sectors. The average age of beef farmers in Ireland is 62, so there’s lots of social issues there, and also they have low income.

This is the percentage of farms. You can see here that 35% of farms have an income under 10,000 in a year. You can see there are 15% of farms, nearly, which have incomes over a hundred thousand. That’s substantial. I’m just pointing out the fact that there is substantial poverty in some of the farms. And here you can see this blue in cattle rearing, cattle other, and so on, and sheep. It’s in those sectors, and obviously it’s where the land is poorest more to the west and the north of Ireland, that those farms are located where they have income of under 10,000 euros for a whole year. And that’s after getting a subsidy of 15,000.

Each dairy farmer gets a check in the door, a direct payment of 21,000 in 2022, that’s 14% of their family farm income, FFI. That’s the family farm income. Now, for cattle rearing, they got a direct payment of 15,000, but they ran their business at a loss. So they only had an income of under 10,000 euros. Cattle Other had an income of about 18,000. Sheep farmers had an income of about 17,000. And tillage farmers got a check in the door of 30,000 euros, and that was 40% of their family farm income. Speaking just economically, there’s a huge problem with the beef and sheep sector. That’s just the situation in Ireland.

This shows the greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector in Ireland. And you can see kind of from 1990 to now, to 2022, it’s just increased marginally. Often you hear lots of people are campaigning on climate change and so on, but it’s not changing at all. So no matter what you hear about that, it’s not changing.

Solutions: A Vegan Transition in Ireland

The solutions to climate warming are to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, and move subsidies to restore nature and biodiversity. Now, there’s no political will for this in Ireland at the moment. And there doesn’t seem to be will in the farming community either. This just shows some of the difficulties and what’s happening.

Development banks are funding increased meat production around the world. The EU spent 250 million on advertising. China’s investing in meat processing plants in Ireland.

This slide is showing the impact of lobbying groups. They fought against the EU ban calling for the end of caged farm animals.

You have organizations in Ireland working (I think it’s fair to say unsuccessfully), to address things like water pollution and nitrates in Ireland from farms. And then you have some movements, more in the UK and also starting in Ireland, for institutions to go through a democratic process where they decide to serve just plant-based options at their institution. So that’s positive, as more young people are getting involved with that. And then you’ve got the Danish government invests a hundred million into plant-based funds, plant-based foods are growing in Europe. They’re worth 5.8 billion now, and they’re also growing.

So there is some kind of a transition. How big it is? It remains to be seen. Probably lots of people have heard about the political changes in the Netherlands there over the last year. That’s the top half. And then the bottom half is a major conference that’s been happening annually now for farmers to diversify into energy, into agritourism, into horticulture, into lots of different, more financially profitable and areas.

This is the last slide. I think there needs to be investment in agricultural diversification in Ireland, something like a billion a year would have a good effect, a hundred million invested in plant-based startups. Those kind of changes; an end to self-employment contracts in meat plants; an end human trafficking in Irish fisheries; the other points here; all of those would start to shift the system to move it towards a plant-based food system. These are some of the actions that could be taken to help achieve a vegan transition of agriculture in Ireland.