It has nothing to do with the environment, the whole thing is a PR stunt being funded by big business to take the bad look of them.Well from an environment point of view it is not the older suckler farmers that are doing all the damage around me it's the young 'progressive' dairy farmers so I'm not sure this change will help Eamons goals on water quality etc.
I came across it in college long before the talk about cutting suckler cows, one of the subjects was construction management or something similar, we had this fictional construction and it was tendering for a project and they had to show how green they were. They were really really green but the whole thing was just a play on words. The whole thing didn't sit well with me as it was all twisted lies but went along with it to pass the subject.
Big companies have plenty of money to fund a PR company to come out with this trash and the public buys into it. For example Aer Lingus came out a few months ago and said they will be carbon neutral by 2050, they offset it against something else but in reality they are still big polluters.
The farm organisations need to get their act together soon and get a good PR company on the case.