DELEGATES TO a conference today will be told by the Society of Irish Foresters, the professional body of foresters in Ireland, that with only 10 per cent of land area under forest, Ireland has huge scope to plant more trees.
In addition to providing climate-change benefits by locking up carbon, forests also provide rural employment and other significant economic and environmental benefits.
The 2010 National Forestry Conference in the Lyrath Estate Hotel, Kilkenny, will highlight forestry’s considerable potential to Ireland.
The current shortage is expected to increase by more than 1.8 million cubic metres per annum by 2018. It will be difficult to achieve the Government’s targets for renewable energy through biomass despite the fact Ireland can grow timber faster than most of the developed world.
The figures have been compiled by the National Council for Forest Research and Development, which will soon launch wood supply and demand forecasts for Ireland.
These will detail the increased wood supply and corresponding increasing demand leading to the potential wood shortages which, it says, will have significant implications for the timber industry and the emerging wood energy market.
Meanwhile, new figures from farm advisory service Teagasc show that fertiliser use, one of the major indicators of farming activity, has shown a dramatic decline and is at its lowest level in decades.
A study of national usage of the major nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium on grassland and agricultural crops covered 2004-2008 and raised concern at ensuring future soil fertility.
The researchers found a drop of 20 per cent in the levels of nitrogen, 40 per cent in phosphorus and a 37 per cent decrease in potassium usage. The extent of the decrease was more dramatic on grassland than on tillage crops.
“Reducing fertiliser usage is a positive step in reducing costs to farmers and has the desirable effect of lessening the impact of agriculture on the rural environment,” said the author, Stan Lalor.