02 January 2024

Minister McConalogue announces support for ‘AgNav’ sustainability tool

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D., has today announced €2 million for the further development of AgNav, a National online farmer-centric portal to encourage and support farmers to implement climate action and sustainability improvements and efficiencies on their farms.

AgNav provides a whole farm sustainability assessment and includes a decision support function that allows science-led plans be made for individual farms to reduce emissions and increase sequestration.

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.”  

AgNav allows advisors to interact with farmers around mitigation strategies and will facilitate the development of a tailored climate action mitigation plan for each individual farm based on sustainable farming practices. It will also provide Bord Bia quality assured farmers with a digital platform to meet their audit requirements for the Origin Green programme.

Professor Frank O’Mara said: “On behalf of Teagasc and our partners Bord Bia and ICBF, we welcome the investment of funding in AgNav from the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. 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.”

Find out more about AgNav here