Offaly student on winning UCD team at 'Great Agri Debate'

University College Dublin (UCD) were crowned winners of the 5th Annual Great Agri-Food debate, organised by Dawn Meats and McDonald’s Ireland in Queen’s University, Belfast earlier this month. Six third level colleges took part in the all-island event, hosted in Northern Ireland for the first time this year.

Stephen Claxton from Offaly represented the winning UCD team which overcame WIT in a hotly-contested and well-informed final on the topic “Global free trade, not subsidies, will deliver a sustainable future for European agriculture”.

The debates were moderated and judged by a range of representatives from the agrifood industry and beyond including Nina Prichard from McDonald’s, HE Mrs Deike Potzel, German Ambassador to Ireland, Pamela Byrne CEO Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Niall Browne CEO Dawn Meats and Dunbia and Tara McCarthy CEO Bord Bia.

The team from Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) has reached the final for the last two years running, taking home the title last year on their home turf. This year they overcame strong competition in the semifinal from DkIT to reach the final.

Victors UCD, now four-time winners of the Great Agri Food Debate, vigorously opposed the motion, with captain Una Sinnott leading her team in arguments that spanned three pillars of environment, economy and society to make their case. Carefully making the distinction between global free trade and free trade agreements, they stressed the need to “meet the needs of the present without compromising on the needs of the future”, warning that global free trade would lead to a race to the bottom, not least with regard to environmental sustainability. Further they cautioned of the impact of global free trade on the fabric of rural communities and reminded the proposing team that we are the natural custodians of our land, and without subsidies, “we will be the destroyers of our lands”.

In response, WIT, led by Danielle Mulligan in proposing the motion, maintained that via subsidies, loss making farm practices are being artificially sustained, with subsidies acting as a “scaffolding” mechanism. They firmly proposed that free trade is the only option for a sustainable future for farming, arguing that subsidies favour big business over farmers, and claiming that “multi-billion-euro companies are receiving multi-million-euro CAP payments”. They called for increased efforts to source new markets globally.