‘Rewetting land is anti-progress and anti-farming’
In June the Programme for Government included a commitment to incentivise the rewetting of land. It was a sea change in farm policy, after centuries of farmers being encouraged to do the very opposite, with drainage often highlighted down the years as the best of farming practice.
The 2019 Climate Action plan sent a shiver down the back of many farmers when it talked about rewetting some 40,000ha of organic grassland soils, while environmental groups seek an even larger area.
For many farmers, the thought of rewetting land that had required huge effort and investment over generations to drain is unthinkable.
“It’s kind of anti-progress and antifarming,” says Limerick farmer and local councillor Emmett O’Brien, who farms land reclaimed from the Shannon estuary over many centuries.
He says farmers in his area are becoming extremely concerned over the direction of the Government’s rewetting policy.
“We have spent generations reclaiming land and getting it to a good quality and then keeping it drained. This whole very green idea of rewetting land just seems completely counter-intuitive,” he says.
While, the Government’s efforts in this area appear to be focused on reclaimed bogland in the Midlands, Emmett says there is no formal designation of what types of lands are ultimately proposed to be rewetted.
Policy creep
“The concern I have is that there will there be a policy creep,” he says. “If this creeps in for bogland that was reclaimed from the ’50s to the ’80s, will it then creep onto reclaimed land that we have all around the Shannon estuary?”
It is estimated that approximately 6,500ha of the Shannon estuary lowlands have been reclaimed for agriculture and other purposes, possibly beginning as far back as the 10th century.
Emmett estimates that about 15pc of the land in Co Limerick been reclaimed from the Shannon.
“That land is used for finishing cattle, silage and it’s good pasture land in the summer time,” he says. “It would have been reclaimed by our forebears and it has the potential to get wet if it’s not maintained by the OPW and farmers themselves.”
He says farmers all along the lowlands of the Fergus estuary to the north (the Fergus reclamation); the floodplain of the River Maigue to the south (the Maigue reclamation); and the lowlands of the inner estuary near Limerick city are concerned.
The impact of a rewetting policy on agriculture, on the beef and dairy trade in these areas would be “absolutely disproportionate” and “off the wall”, he says.
“All the compensation in the world, all the grants and schemes, will not compensate for the basic dignity of a farmer being able to farm his land and use it to the extent that he wants,” he stresses.
Farmers, he says, are already restricted in the type of activity they can carry out on these lands: he cites the GLAS scheme and their status as Special Area of Conservation.
“This is not to say I’m antibiodiversity, but rewetting is a very vague concept and the last thing we want to see is good land that we are fighting to keep maintained let go to ducks,” he says.
Emmett took over running the farm in the townland of Ballydoole less than 10 years.
“I farm 75 acres in total and I’ve about 18 acres right on the Shannon estuary bounding an embankment,” he says.
All about progress:
“I am one of 17-20 farmers in Ballydoole with similar land. The vast proportion of lands here are reclaimed from the Shannon and if not reclaimed there are embankments on the Shannon shore protecting land.”
Concerns have also been raised over the broad impact of the policy: farmers who sign up to rewet their land could inadvertently damage the land of the neighbours.
“If someone else rewets, it will affect your land as well and your ability to drain. Your drain might be going into another farm before it gets to a watercourse,” says Emmett.
“If a farmer is not maintaining his land or gets involved in this rewetting scheme, it has an impact on all the surrounding farmers.
There is a lot of concern about this.”
Also a practising barrister, Emmett notes a certain erosion in proprietary rights, fearing and that there is little “ordinary farmers” can do in the face of such policy creep.
He feels that a “radical green agenda” is inching into the public mindset and into government policy.
“That is the subject of the common good. These types of policies are being implemented in legislation and our proprietary rights are being eroded by reference to the common good,” he says.
Highlighting that policies such as Special Areas of Conservation are usually implemented by direct effect or by European directives he says: “An ordinary farmer in west Limerick or Co Clare doesn’t have the wherewithal to challenge these designations all the way to the European Court of Justice. He’d have to sell the farm to pay for the legal fee.”
Farmers, he says, struggle to imagine their land going back to being wet and covered in rushes after the years they have put in breaking their backs trying to convert it into good pasture land.
“The whole concept of humanity is to progress yourself from one generation to the next — it’s not to be going backwards.”