So at the moment, suckler farmers are producing top quality weanlings, and exporters are paying up to €4/kg for them in marts all around Ireland.

Take Elphin in Roscommon on Monday this week, when 330 weanlings were presented for sale and over one third of them were purchased for export by agents. Think of the number of weanlings these agents actually bid on to purchase those 130 or so weanlings.

At the same time, think of the network of players involved to rear the cattle from when the calf was born – the co-op, the accountant, the shop etc.

At each step of the way, there are local people involved that keep towns moving and keep rural life in parts of the country where land quality is marginal.

So the Irish suckler farmer takes the hit for the emissions from that animal and then it is purchased by an exporter, put on a boat and within days it arrives at a feedlot in Africa.

At the moment, the current policy being imposed on Irish farmers is a policy to try and reduce the number of these food producers to try and cut emissions, despite the fact the weanling is consumed in Africa.

Data centres

Now think of data centres. These are what look like huge warehouses springing up all around Dublin. Essentially the sheds (data centres) are built, the servers (look a bit like big generators) come in on a forklift and are stacked up in these sheds.

When these servers and the air conditioning to keep them cool are plugged in, they consume huge energy and start heating up. This is why data centres are built in countries like Ireland, because it is not extremely hot in summer like some of the southern European countries.

Anyway, Colm McCarthy’s point this week is that essentially when we build these huge data centres, over and above what we need in Ireland, what we are effectively doing is exporting electricity.

Marts

Now, we do need some data centres. For example, for you to be able to bid on cattle at the mart over the phone, you need to be able to see exactly what is happening in the cattle ring at the same time as the people around the ring.

If you bid on that animal it has to be real time – the power to be able to do that is possible because you are well connected, almost instant connectivity, and we need some data centres in Ireland to be able to handle this.

Getting back to the exporting electricity point. So, we have established we have weanlings and electricity being exported. We also import electricity, and the energy sector benefits on emissions because some of what is imported is renewable electricity from the UK.

Now, the politicians justify all these data centres on the basis that they will use renewable energy – so wind, solar etc. In effect, what the data centre owners will do is they go off and buy a wind farm.

This ticks the box for renewable energy production, and in theory all is ok.

That’s all fine for the data centre owners, big business, they can carry that investment, and drive on – more planning permission for data centres.

However, the catch is that there is a limit on the number of wind farms being granted permission, so then it’s a case that the energy from that wind farm is not available for anyone else.

In the same way it is probable that the number of solar farms positioned on land will continue to be curtailed or maybe even banned in future, as is happening in other countries.

Offshore

The argument is then made for offshore wind farms, but many of the big energy firms are walking away from that at the moment. The farmers, however, are not allowed even discount on their emissions if they have a field of solar panels right beside the suckler farm.

So what does all this mean? Current policy direction means the Elphin suckler farmer is incentivised to reduce the food he or she can produce. In public the farmer is portrayed as careless, sloppy, maybe even dangerous to the environment. Total nonsense.

On the other hand, data centres are welcomed and invited with open arms in the door, given incentives, they offset the energy required (emissions) by buying a wind farm.

We build them so people in other countries can continue to play games on mobile phones. The hypocrisy is real. The playing pitch is deeply unfair against food and farming.

Data centres provide little relative employment of any significance – no ongoing recycling of money in a rural economy, local communities.

If this continues, in ten years time when we have lost a generation of young farmers, we’ll potentially have unoccupied parts of rural Ireland doing nothing.

Instead, this land could be producing the most environmentally efficient food that will be needed in Africa, like where the Elphin weanlings are going this week.

As Colm McCarthy points out, it is high time for farmers to understand this dynamic and start informing politicians of the real direction of travel.

What’s the point in getting out of an internationally competitive food sector to provide uncompetitive data for every other country in the world?