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Abstract
The increasing concern over climate change has led to a number of international agreements to
control greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture currently accounts for 28 percent of Ireland’s total
greenhouse gas emission and therefore has a major role to play in Ireland achieving its emissions
targets. To date research into reducing emissions from Irish agriculture has focused on devising
abatement strategies at the farm level such as changes in animal feeding practices. Alternatively
emissions could be controlled using market-based emissions abatement strategies such as emissions
taxes or permit trading, which are in theory a least cost means of cutting emissions. This paper uses
data from the Irish National Farm Survey to construct a farm-level Linear Programming model and to
simulate a market for tradable emission permits. The impact on average gross margin of allowing
farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by trading permits is compared with a scenario where
emissions are unconstrained and a scenario where a command and control approach is adopted to
reduce emissions.