The Food Vision Dairy Group has outlined the parameters of a voluntary exit or reduction scheme in the final version of its report, which has been seen by Agriland.

The report recommends that "in return for an appropriate incentive", a scheme to encourage dairy farmers to "voluntarily reduce or exit the production of ruminant breeding livestock for a minimum number of years" should be considered.

It also details that the choice to participate in any scheme would be for the "individual farmer to make based on individual circumstances".

Estimates outlined in the report indicate that for every 100,000 dairy cows reduced, "450,000t or 0.45Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent are removed from the inventory".

This calculation in the report is based on a methane contribution of 37,000 tonnes (122kg of methane per dairy cow in addition to 11.4kg methane per dairy cow in stored manure) and a nitrous oxide contribution of 8,000 tonnes (deposited by animal and chemical N) for every 10,000 cows.

However the Food Vision Dairy Group cautioned that:

The group also stated in its report that the principles that need to be considered for such a scheme include:

The Food Vision Dairy Group also outlined a number of challenges that would be associated with such a scheme, which includes securing the level of public funding required to incentivise the adoption of the scheme.