In this week's NERI blog, NERI intern Aoife Murphy examines factors which may impede equitable transitions towards environmental sustainability in the Agricultural sector on the island of Ireland.
Despite its disproportionate contribution to overall emissions, the Irish agricultural sector, both north and south of the border, has seldom been the focus of Just Transition efforts. In the decade between 2009 and 2019, the Republic of Ireland’s (ROI) agricultural sector was consistently more than treble the EU average as a proportion of emissions. Where typically, the agricultural sector accounts for just over a tenth of emissions, it contributed close to a third of aggregate emissions in ROI in 2019. Similarly, Northern Ireland’s agricultural sector accounts for a large amount of the total emissions, contributing 27 per cent of total greenhouse gases in 2018.
Lowering emissions will prove to be a significant challenge for the two agricultural sectors on the island, not to mention doing so in a manner that would bring equality and opportunity to its workers. The recently released Climate Action Plan which has set a target of a 22-30 per cent reduction in sectoral emissions in ROI by 2030 relative to 2018 levels. If these targets to be achieved in a just manner, current inequalities within the sector must also be tackled.
The latest in the NERI report series looks at the characteristics of the agricultural workers in Ireland, and Northern Ireland where possible, which may leave workers vulnerable if policy does not mitigate against job-loss during the greening of the sector. I also examine various levels of social and economic inequality between the agricultural sector and the total workforce, between the Irish agricultural sector and the average EU agricultural sector, and between large and small-scale farmers within the sector itself.
One such indicator of socio-economic inequality looked at is the difference in upper-secondary and tertiary education levels between agricultural workers and the total workforce. In the Republic of Ireland in 2020, there was a 22.5 percentage point difference between the proportion of employed persons, aged between 15 and 64, with an upper second level of education or higher in the total workforce compared to the proportion of those working in the agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sector, with this gap steadily increasing in recent years.
This process is reflected in Northern Ireland as in 2019, for example. there was a 16.6 percentage point difference between the proportion of employed persons in the total workforce with a tertiary education and the proportion of those in the primary sector.
One of the standout characteristics of the agricultural labour force is its ageing population with approximately 26,400 workers over the age of 65 in 2021Q2 and approximately 6,700 people aged 75 or over working in 2021Q2.
Eurostat data also indicate relatively poor working conditions within the sector. For example, in 2020, 1.4 per cent of the total workforce worked 70 hours or more on a weekly basis. In contrast, 22.6 per cent of agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sector workers worked 70 hours or more weekly. Furthermore, agriculture, forestry, and fishery workers tend to earn less than the average worker in Ireland. In 2018, for example, employed persons within the sector typically earned 13.88 euro per hour compared to 17.79 euro per hour typically earned by employed persons in the total labour force.
Although it is inevitable that the agricultural sector will have to reform in order to reduce emissions in the coming years, justice within that reform is dependent on the foresight of policymakers and their understanding of the realities faced by employed persons within the sector. If a Just Transition is to occur in the agricultural sector across the island of Ireland, policy will have to account for and redress these risk factors.