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Environmental Sustainability Awards 2025 now open for entries
Applications for the Environmental Sustainability Awards 2025 are now open. The awards aim to help farmers, consumers, and Irish citizens to be proud of the great work undertaken on Irish farms.
Irish farmers produce high quality, nutritious and healthy food to feed a growing global population. Producing this food in an environmentally sustainable fashion is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Irish farmers currently.
There is much coverage of the environmental and sustainability challenges faced by Irish farmers, but we hear less about those farmers who are doing a great job farming in an environmentally-friendly manner.
There is little time given to the positive stories of farmers taking steps on their farms to reduce their farm’s environmental footprint, while continuing to produce high quality, nutritious food.
Encouraging farmers to feel that they can play their part in meeting environmental challenges is an important step on the journey to a more sustainable future.
The Environmental Sustainability Awards recognise and celebrate individual farmers who operate sustainable and profitable farming systems, while incorporating the latest scientific developments and technologies on their farms.
These actions reduce gaseous emissions (greenhouse gases and ammonia), improve water quality, enhance biodiversity, improve soil health and carbon, and diversify the farm system.
The 2025 awards include two new “best of” categories, for farming organically and diversifying the farming system.
The awards have an overall prize fund of €30,000. In addition to an Overall Award winner, prizes will be awarded to six further category winners.
Overall award
The overall award will be presented to the farmer who is judged to be farming in the most environmentally sustainable manner.
The winner will be actively engaging in practices to reduce gaseous emissions, improve water quality, enhance biodiversity, and improve soil health and carbon. They will also be demonstrating high levels of efficiency and overall productivity.
The overall winner will be chosen from one of the category winners. In total they will receive a total prize of €10,000. This is made up of €4,000 as a category winner and an additional €6,000 as the overall winner.
Category awards
There will be six category awards. Prizes will be awarded for six “best of” categories.
‘Best of’ award winners will be judged to be farming in an environmentally friendly manner overall, but have made an outstanding contribution to the environment in one of the following six areas:
- Reducing gaseous emissions;
- Improving water quality;
- Enhancing biodiversity;
- Improving soil health and carbon;
- Farming organically;
- Diversifying the farming system to improve environmental sustainability.
Each winner in the “best of” category will receive €4,000.
Awards criteria
The following is a list of the criteria which will be used to assess applicants for a Teagasc FBD Environmental Sustainability award:
- Actions taken to reduce gaseous emissions;
- Actions taken to improve water quality;
- Actions taken to enhance biodiversity;
- Actions taken to improve soil health and carbon;
- Farming organically;
- Diversification;
- Overall farm productivity;
- Participation in a sustainability programme.
These awards are funded by FBD Insurance. The awards are organised by Teagasc with the support of Bord Bia and ICBF.
The post Environmental Sustainability Awards 2025 now open for entries appeared first on Agriland.ie.
February 6, 2025 at 07:06AM
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Agriland Team