Andrew Muir is Northern Ireland’s new farm minister, appointed with the task of heading up the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).
The Alliance Party representative hails from Bangor in north Co. Down, and has a background in infrastructure and finance.
Commenting on his appointment, Muir said: “It is an incredible honour to become a minister in the Executive and I want to thank my party colleagues for their faith in me.
“I entered politics driven by a desire to help people right across our community I hope I will be able to to do so even more directly as DAERA minister and a member of the Executive.
Significantly, Andrew Muir has no direct experience of production agriculture.
This may prove problematic as he meets the broad spectrum of farm stakeholder bodies in Northern Ireland (NI) over the coming weeks.
One of the key issues facing Muir, with immediate effect, will be the settling-down of the new Brexit trading arrangements, where exports and imports from and into NI are concerned.
John Blair, from south Co. Antrim, is the current Alliance spokesperson for agriculture, who took to the airwaves last week to relate the party’s priorities for farming, the environment and rural affairs.
He referred to DAERA as having equal responsibility for the environment, rural affairs and agriculture.
Blair then went on to highlight the challenges associated with climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental sustainability: production agriculture didn’t get much of a look-in, however.
The manifesto produced by Alliance in the run-up to the last Stormont Assembly elections marked the launch of the party’s ‘Green Deal’.
This encompassed a number of key policy priorities.
Its implementation would see a NI Executive work alongside farmers with the core aim of building a sustainable farming system.
In doing so, the issues of climate change, wildlife crises and the production of quality food would be tackled in equal measure.
The starting point for all of this would be fully-funded carbon audits of farms. Such an approach would assess where performance improvements and savings can be made.
This approach is based on the premise that farms with a low carbon footprint are often the most efficient and profitable.
Audits would occur every five years and be conducted by consultants approved by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) or an independent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
According to the manifesto, audits would be required for future eligibility for government funding. Financial support will also be dependent on emissions reduction and increased carbon sequestration.
As well as implementing a carbon auditing process, the Alliance Party is committed to introduce an Agriculture Act for NI. This would contain bespoke policies relevant to the sector.
Alliance also wants to see agriculture in NI successfully addressing the challenge of ammonia emissions. The efficient use of anaerobic digesters is seen as being of critical importance in this regard.
Continued support for research on ruminant diets to reduce methane emissions is also envisaged by the Alliance Party, as is the use of renewable energies.
The technologies to be utilised in this context include: battery-powered electric or hydrogen tractors and other farm vehicles charged by locally generated wind or solar.
