Time to shout stop in ‘Green bashing’ of rural way of life

Maybe it was because this was one of the cold evenings of last week when the biting and icy drops seemed to take flea bites out of any piece of exposed skin but I just felt that I had reached the point of: “I can’t take any more”, in terms of RTE’s programme bombardment on climate change.

We were treated to so-called ‘visualisations’ of an Armageddon scenario that will engulf our lands over the next 20 or 30 years and shots of the Irish countryside where farmers have the nerve to keep on rearing cattle and sheep, even though this will mean more methane emissions entering our atmosphere.

I thought for a minute or two about my parents, my grandparents and those generations before them who eked out a living from the soil and gradually helped transform our island from a land of poverty and hunger into one, where not alone, could we produce enough food for ourselves but plenty to sell to other countries as well.

But, make no mistake about it, we are now being bombarded with one message and not least from RTE – our national broadcaster – that we are doing is wrong and very wrong.

Last week, I grabbed a soundbite from one of their ‘radio stars’ who knows everything about everything, asking if it was right and proper to be exporting beef all the way to China, after years of effort to try and open the door to one of the world’s most lucrative food markets.

The ironic about all of this is that practically every farmer I know of across my own parish and county go about their business in the most conscientious of ways. Most of them are non-intensive; they operate environmentally friendly grass-based production systems; they are willing to embrace the scientifically based advice of Teagasc in terms of improving their carbon footprint statistics . . . and yet there is this continuous barrage of criticism, nay even paranoia, about the way we do things.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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