Minister McConalogue allocates €2M to advance environmental sustainability tool
The 'AgNav' tool aims to enhance sustainability in agriculture through personalised climate action plans and collaborative efforts between advisors and farmers
Print11 January 2024
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D., has allocated €2 million for the continued enhancement of AgNav. This national online portal is designed to actively engage farmers, encouraging and assisting them in adopting climate action measures and enhancing sustainability practices on their farms.
AgNav serves as a platform for advisors to collaborate with farmers on implementing mitigation strategies. It aims to create personalised climate action plans for individual farms, aligning with sustainable farming practices. Additionally, the portal will serve Bord Bia quality assured farmers, providing them with a digital solution to meet audit requirements for the Origin Green programme.
Minister McConalogue said: “The sustainability digital platform “AgNav” has been jointly developed by Teagasc, Bord Bia and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) with support from my Department, ensuring and demonstrating a collaborative whole of Government and industry approach. This collaboration leverages the most robust inter-agency data, research and resources to drive climate action and efficiencies on farm. The development of AgNav is of strategic national importance as it provides a mechanism for quantification of progress towards Climate Action Plan targets for the agri-sector as well as supporting environmental and economic sustainability.”
The Minister added “AgNav puts the farmer in control of actions on their farm that will deliver on Climate Action. AgNav provides a whole farm sustainability assessment and includes a decision support function (forecaster tool) that allows science-led plans be made for individual farms to reduce emissions and increase sequestration.”
Professor Frank O’Mara said: “This new funding will greatly accelerate the development of AgNav which utilises the three agencies’ collective knowledge to provide farmers with accurate and verifiable data to support decision making with respect to environmental performance. AgNav is an ambitious technical and development programme and will be delivered by the partnership, moving AgNav from the current pilot phase to wider adoption. This will enable all farmers across Ireland to set new standards in terms of the environmental sustainability of their individual farms through adoption of mitigation technologies while continuing to improve productivity and ensure economic viability.”
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