Abstract
Agriculture in a developed country such as Ireland uses intensive tillage systems, high energy and large fertilizer applications, resulting in fossil-fuel based emissions, reductions in soil carbon, and emissions of nitrous oxides. In addition, animal herds emit high methane levels. Accompanying this is the fact that environmental policy within agriculture and its effects on the revenue and output of Irish farmers is an important issue in Ireland due to the relative strength of the agriculture sector. As discussed in Chap. 2, even though Ireland’s sustained strong economic performance since the mid-1990s benefited other sectors more than agriculture, the agri-food sector as a whole still accounted for an estimated 8.6 % of GDP in 2005. Primary agriculture remains more important to the Irish economy than is the case in most other EU member states. Irish agriculture accounted for 2.7 % of GDP at market prices in 2005 in Ireland, compared to an EU average of 1.6 %.
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- 1.
Family Farm Income as defined in the National Farm Survey is calculated by deducting all the farming costs from the value of farming gross output. Family Farm Income represents the financial reward to all members of the family, who work on the farm, for their labour, management and investment. It is important to note however that FFI does not include income from non-farm sources and therefore may not be equal to household income.
- 2.
This is done by multiplying CO2 equivalent of methane emissions by €7.50.
- 3.
It should be noted that in the December 2009 Budget that a carbon tax was introduced for the country but excluded a tax on agricultural emissions.
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Hynes, S., Morrissey, K., O’Donoghue, C. (2013). Modelling Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Agriculture. In: O'Donoghue, C., Ballas, D., Clarke, G., Hynes, S., Morrissey, K. (eds) Spatial Microsimulation for Rural Policy Analysis. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30026-4_8
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