Good ground conditions have let us fully empty the slatted tanks before the official deadline of 1 October. We were still dithering on what to upgrade our slurry spreading facilities to, but the announcement – which wasn’t a surprise that dribble bars will not be eligible for TAMS support – has pretty well decided what way we will go.

A 60% subvention is too much to ignore. We are putting the slurry out on the still-to-be-ploughed stubble land at about 1,500 gallons/acre.

Three weeks ago, we took soil samples in every field, except where the beans have still to be harvested.

It is a condition laid down for some of the crops we grow that we have to soil test every four years. I hadn’t realised that the four years were up but they are and I expect the results to be back within the next few days.

On the tillage side, we hope to begin ploughing and ideally sow the winter barley this week

These four years have coincided not just with COVID-19 but with wrenching price rises in fertiliser cost, with urea at one stage costing over €1,000/t and nearly a quadrupling in phosphate and potash prices.

While prices have come down as far as I can see, the P and Ks are still almost double what they were before the Ukraine invasion.

I see I am not the only one who cut down on fertiliser purchases.

National usage

Not surprisingly, national usage is reckoned to have fallen by about 30%, but the pricing system for fertilisers is less than transparent, as are the import arrangements.

With Russia still theoretically eligible to legally supply the Irish market, the Department should reinvigorate its traditional monitoring of the sector. Now that we have a food regulator the need for a fertiliser counterpart should be investigated.

While ground conditions are excellent so far, grass growth has improved so we have started grazing the aftergrass with some of our dairy-beef forward stores. As in the spring, we are grazing them by day and giving them silage and concentrates in the shed in the evening.

It’s extra work but they quickly get used to going in and out and are visibly doing much better than their more backward comrades on grass alone.

I was interested to read in last week’s Irish Farmers Journal about the ABP factory open day on dairy-beef systems but with no mention of cash and profitability or the lack of it.

On the tillage side, we hope to begin ploughing and ideally sow the winter barley this week.

The aim is to continue from the barley to the wheat and finally the oats. Last year, we never got to sow the oats in the autumn. Let’s hope this sowing season is different.