Clive Carter was on the school/creche run when I rang him on Friday morning.
“I’ll call you back in five, Pat,” he said. And he did.
Clive is the PRO for the Irish Grain Growers (IGG), when he isn’t being a father and a farmer.
Like most people in Irish farm organisations, he puts in far more than he get out of it.
Like most people in Irish farm organisations, he does it because he wants to see a better future for farmers. In this age of cynicism, it’s easy to forget that.
I was calling Clive for details of the open day that the IGG was hosting in Vicarstown. And he kindly forwarded the details of what was a busy agenda.
Barry Cowen, an MEP in Laois, where we were, but also for Galway, Donegal and Monaghan, would address the assembled. Much of Barry's beat is not a tillage heartland.
Following a Q&A with Cowen, there would be a policy launch, followed by a farm walk with John Dunne of Goldcrop, before a hot lunch for all.
The engagement with Barry Cowen was a good exchange of views, particularly with a new CAP proposal almost upon us.
John Dunne is always an excellent guide around crop fields, but the policy launch is what I’ll focus on here.
The flagship proposal is the IGG’s vision for a tillage expansion and sustainability scheme (let's give it the acronym TESS), the latest in agriculture’s addiction to acronyms.
In fairness to IGG, this particular acronym (TESS, not IGG) was the dreamchild of the Food Vision 2030 tillage group.
Vision
The IGG’s vision for a TESS is based on both sustainability and expansion. It requires that participants must have at least 25% of their land in cereals, pulses (mainly peas and beans in Ireland) or oilseed rape. They must also be participants in either IGAS or AgNav.
A payment of €350/ha is proposed. To achieve this payment, a participant must adopt at least three of a range of proposed measures.
These include the reduction or refining of nitrogen fertiliser usage, to have more than 10% space for nature, improved crop rotation and use of specified break crops and companion cropping. Autosteer on tractors, which makes nutrient and pesticide use much more efficient and accurate, is a measure too, as is non-inversion tillage, low-drift spray nozzles and use of organic fertiliser.
Room is left for “other bespoke measures”, which sounds like a cop-out, but isn’t. The reality is that tillage farming is changing fast and, as it evolves, other possible measures will present themselves, and soon.
For tillage expansion, an applicant must till land that had been in grass and till it for at least five years. Interestingly, forage maize, beet and potatoes are excluded from the crops that can be used in the rotation.
They are also excluded from the earlier crop rotation proposals. The payment would be a 50% top-up of the sustainability payment, in other words a further 175/ha.
Barry Cowen MEP addresses farmers at the IGG event in Vicarstown, Co Laois.
Fair play to the IGG for bringing specific proposals forward. We’ll see how they fly with politicians over the coming weeks.
Everyone gets to have an opinion on the future of tillage
The Food Vision 2030 tillage group, like the parallel groups for beef and sheep and for dairy, included representation from the Department of Agriculture, from farm organisations, from industry and from agencies.
The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the IGG were both represented, as you would expect. The IGG specifically represent grain growers.
The IFA not only has a grain committee right through its storied existence, it also has a potato growers and a horticulture committee, so arable farmers have three dedicated committees within the IFA.
Macra, as the organisation representing all young farmers, was also present.
Interestingly, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) were also on the tillage group.
Neither organisation have committees for tillage farmers. I’m sure there are many dairy cattle and sheep farmers with tillage crops, but, by the same token, there are mainly tillage farmers who milk cows or keep livestock.
But the grain growers were not on the dairy or the cattle and sheep food vision groups.
Inconsistency
This seems to be an inconsistency, to say the least. Of course, every sector is interconnected.
Tillage farmers grow crops for livestock farmers, they sell straw to them, they rent stubble and beet tops to them.
Tillage farmers also take slurry and farmyard manure from livestock farmers and take fields from them to rotate tillage crops through grassland at times.
The majority of Irish cereals are grown for animal, rather than human consumption. Beet, beans and peas are more likely to end up in the belly of a bullock or a ewe than in any food people consume. So tillage farmers and livestock farmers are very dependent on each other.
There is a logic in having the related sectors in the tillage Food Vision group, forging a shared view of the future. But that logic cuts both ways.
It’s a bit like how the Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM) was briefly scrapped (before being reinstated) last year due to fears that there would be a shortage of straw for feeding and bedding.
I won’t revisit that unhappy few days except to comment that never has a scheme for dairy or sheep farmers been changed to take account of the concerns or needs of tillage farmers.
Our tillage editor Siobhan Walsh this week revealed that the SIM has been oversubscribed by 50% this year. Perhaps this is because farmers who were never interested in the scheme before have a new desire to chop and incorporate their straw rather than bale and sell it.
But it’s far more likely that the huge application levels this year - 66,482ha compared with 2024’s 44,123ha - are a direct knock-on effect from last year’s events.
The creation of the Baling Assistance Payment was a one-off, designed to encourage farmers who had applied for the SIM to instead bale their straw and receive a part-payment.
It was made clear last year that it’s a one-off event. That was re-iterated again this year. But you can’t blame farmers who fully intend to bale all their straw to throw a SIM application in, just in case last year’s events are repeated. There seems to be no sign of it, but there was no down side for the applicant in doing so.
I now have no idea if all, some or none of the straw chopping I applied for will be included in the scheme
The down side is for people like myself, who apply for the SIM every year and who chop their straw. I now have no idea if all, some or none of the straw chopping I applied for will be included in the scheme (there is a ranking scheme, I will find out in due course).
Should I look for customers for straw, just in case I’m excluded for the scheme? That wouldn’t be fair to those farmers, as I might be ringing them to say, “sorry, I actually won’t have straw for you”.
It's all a bit of a mess.
Confession time
One last point, one I make as a practicing tillage farmer. Like every on-farm event nowadays, the importance of farm safety was visible, from the spotless yard and work environment to the machinery and the safety equipment, both on machinery and for operators, clearly present in the farm environment. This I applaud.
But there is one compulsory practice that exposes tillage farmers to unnecessary risk and I have stopped doing it. It relates to the safe disposal of farm chemical containers.
The rules state that one should triple-rinse all containers, ensure all rinse water is appropriately disposed of as hazardous waste and then stored safely before bringing them to a farm plastics recycling collection centre.
I follow all these protocols faithfully. All containers are triple-rinsed into the induction tank on the sprayer, which has a high-power clean water tap to aid washing and rinsing.
The containers are fully dripped into the induction tank. It makes filling the sprayer a fairly frantic activity, there’s a lot to do in the 20 minutes or so it takes to fill the 3,000 litre tank.
I might be using four separate plant protection products in the one tank mix. Some of these might be foliar feeds or supplements, some pesticides.
Anyway, I then take the washed and dried containers and place them in an empty half-tonne fertiliser bag for transport to the collection centre.
But there is one other step I am meant to take, that I no longer do. I’m supposed to puncture every can and container, to ensure it cannot be re-used. And this is a dangerous activity.
I’ve used penknives to carry this out, but some containers are small and made of hard plastic, and I’ve broken a fair share of blades doing this. For some containers, I used a screwdriver as a punch, but this is a very hit and miss operation.
I’ve cut myself and struck myself doing this and, eventually, I decided that the safety risks outweighed the benefits.
All containers are placed out of reach for re-use and it is dangerous to myself to continue puncturing them.
I know I’m in breach of regulations, but I would respectfully suggest the people who dreamt up this regulation try to comply with it and then consider it’s merits and drawbacks.
I could use an electric drill to puncture the cans - I actually did this for a while. But this contaminates the drill bit and requires leaving the cans lying around until I’m finished spraying to do the drilling.
That seems more risky to me than immediately putting the containers into a big bag with a small opening.
This is my confession - and I ask for absolution.
Clive Carter was on the school/creche run when I rang him on Friday morning.
“I’ll call you back in five, Pat,” he said. And he did.
Clive is the PRO for the Irish Grain Growers (IGG), when he isn’t being a father and a farmer.
Like most people in Irish farm organisations, he puts in far more than he get out of it.
Like most people in Irish farm organisations, he does it because he wants to see a better future for farmers. In this age of cynicism, it’s easy to forget that.
I was calling Clive for details of the open day that the IGG was hosting in Vicarstown. And he kindly forwarded the details of what was a busy agenda.
Barry Cowen, an MEP in Laois, where we were, but also for Galway, Donegal and Monaghan, would address the assembled. Much of Barry's beat is not a tillage heartland.
Following a Q&A with Cowen, there would be a policy launch, followed by a farm walk with John Dunne of Goldcrop, before a hot lunch for all.
The engagement with Barry Cowen was a good exchange of views, particularly with a new CAP proposal almost upon us.
John Dunne is always an excellent guide around crop fields, but the policy launch is what I’ll focus on here.
The flagship proposal is the IGG’s vision for a tillage expansion and sustainability scheme (let's give it the acronym TESS), the latest in agriculture’s addiction to acronyms.
In fairness to IGG, this particular acronym (TESS, not IGG) was the dreamchild of the Food Vision 2030 tillage group.
Vision
The IGG’s vision for a TESS is based on both sustainability and expansion. It requires that participants must have at least 25% of their land in cereals, pulses (mainly peas and beans in Ireland) or oilseed rape. They must also be participants in either IGAS or AgNav.
A payment of €350/ha is proposed. To achieve this payment, a participant must adopt at least three of a range of proposed measures.
These include the reduction or refining of nitrogen fertiliser usage, to have more than 10% space for nature, improved crop rotation and use of specified break crops and companion cropping. Autosteer on tractors, which makes nutrient and pesticide use much more efficient and accurate, is a measure too, as is non-inversion tillage, low-drift spray nozzles and use of organic fertiliser.
Room is left for “other bespoke measures”, which sounds like a cop-out, but isn’t. The reality is that tillage farming is changing fast and, as it evolves, other possible measures will present themselves, and soon.
For tillage expansion, an applicant must till land that had been in grass and till it for at least five years. Interestingly, forage maize, beet and potatoes are excluded from the crops that can be used in the rotation.
They are also excluded from the earlier crop rotation proposals. The payment would be a 50% top-up of the sustainability payment, in other words a further 175/ha.
Barry Cowen MEP addresses farmers at the IGG event in Vicarstown, Co Laois.
Fair play to the IGG for bringing specific proposals forward. We’ll see how they fly with politicians over the coming weeks.
Everyone gets to have an opinion on the future of tillage
The Food Vision 2030 tillage group, like the parallel groups for beef and sheep and for dairy, included representation from the Department of Agriculture, from farm organisations, from industry and from agencies.
The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the IGG were both represented, as you would expect. The IGG specifically represent grain growers.
The IFA not only has a grain committee right through its storied existence, it also has a potato growers and a horticulture committee, so arable farmers have three dedicated committees within the IFA.
Macra, as the organisation representing all young farmers, was also present.
Interestingly, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) were also on the tillage group.
Neither organisation have committees for tillage farmers. I’m sure there are many dairy cattle and sheep farmers with tillage crops, but, by the same token, there are mainly tillage farmers who milk cows or keep livestock.
But the grain growers were not on the dairy or the cattle and sheep food vision groups.
Inconsistency
This seems to be an inconsistency, to say the least. Of course, every sector is interconnected.
Tillage farmers grow crops for livestock farmers, they sell straw to them, they rent stubble and beet tops to them.
Tillage farmers also take slurry and farmyard manure from livestock farmers and take fields from them to rotate tillage crops through grassland at times.
The majority of Irish cereals are grown for animal, rather than human consumption. Beet, beans and peas are more likely to end up in the belly of a bullock or a ewe than in any food people consume. So tillage farmers and livestock farmers are very dependent on each other.
There is a logic in having the related sectors in the tillage Food Vision group, forging a shared view of the future. But that logic cuts both ways.
It’s a bit like how the Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM) was briefly scrapped (before being reinstated) last year due to fears that there would be a shortage of straw for feeding and bedding.
I won’t revisit that unhappy few days except to comment that never has a scheme for dairy or sheep farmers been changed to take account of the concerns or needs of tillage farmers.
Our tillage editor Siobhan Walsh this week revealed that the SIM has been oversubscribed by 50% this year. Perhaps this is because farmers who were never interested in the scheme before have a new desire to chop and incorporate their straw rather than bale and sell it.
But it’s far more likely that the huge application levels this year - 66,482ha compared with 2024’s 44,123ha - are a direct knock-on effect from last year’s events.
The creation of the Baling Assistance Payment was a one-off, designed to encourage farmers who had applied for the SIM to instead bale their straw and receive a part-payment.
It was made clear last year that it’s a one-off event. That was re-iterated again this year. But you can’t blame farmers who fully intend to bale all their straw to throw a SIM application in, just in case last year’s events are repeated. There seems to be no sign of it, but there was no down side for the applicant in doing so.
I now have no idea if all, some or none of the straw chopping I applied for will be included in the scheme
The down side is for people like myself, who apply for the SIM every year and who chop their straw. I now have no idea if all, some or none of the straw chopping I applied for will be included in the scheme (there is a ranking scheme, I will find out in due course).
Should I look for customers for straw, just in case I’m excluded for the scheme? That wouldn’t be fair to those farmers, as I might be ringing them to say, “sorry, I actually won’t have straw for you”.
It's all a bit of a mess.
Confession time
One last point, one I make as a practicing tillage farmer. Like every on-farm event nowadays, the importance of farm safety was visible, from the spotless yard and work environment to the machinery and the safety equipment, both on machinery and for operators, clearly present in the farm environment. This I applaud.
But there is one compulsory practice that exposes tillage farmers to unnecessary risk and I have stopped doing it. It relates to the safe disposal of farm chemical containers.
The rules state that one should triple-rinse all containers, ensure all rinse water is appropriately disposed of as hazardous waste and then stored safely before bringing them to a farm plastics recycling collection centre.
I follow all these protocols faithfully. All containers are triple-rinsed into the induction tank on the sprayer, which has a high-power clean water tap to aid washing and rinsing.
The containers are fully dripped into the induction tank. It makes filling the sprayer a fairly frantic activity, there’s a lot to do in the 20 minutes or so it takes to fill the 3,000 litre tank.
I might be using four separate plant protection products in the one tank mix. Some of these might be foliar feeds or supplements, some pesticides.
Anyway, I then take the washed and dried containers and place them in an empty half-tonne fertiliser bag for transport to the collection centre.
But there is one other step I am meant to take, that I no longer do. I’m supposed to puncture every can and container, to ensure it cannot be re-used. And this is a dangerous activity.
I’ve used penknives to carry this out, but some containers are small and made of hard plastic, and I’ve broken a fair share of blades doing this. For some containers, I used a screwdriver as a punch, but this is a very hit and miss operation.
I’ve cut myself and struck myself doing this and, eventually, I decided that the safety risks outweighed the benefits.
All containers are placed out of reach for re-use and it is dangerous to myself to continue puncturing them.
I know I’m in breach of regulations, but I would respectfully suggest the people who dreamt up this regulation try to comply with it and then consider it’s merits and drawbacks.
I could use an electric drill to puncture the cans - I actually did this for a while. But this contaminates the drill bit and requires leaving the cans lying around until I’m finished spraying to do the drilling.
That seems more risky to me than immediately putting the containers into a big bag with a small opening.
This is my confession - and I ask for absolution.
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