At this stage the National Ploughing Championships have come to an end for the year.

In all, 244,000 people attended the championships in glorious weather.

Despite the pressures that farmers are under due to the hard summer behind us, the atmosphere was unbelievable.

From a Macra perspective, it was an unqualified success. As was noticed by many, Macra used a different type of shelter this year, we used an inflatable tent that was christened by many as the ‘Macra bouncy castle’.

'Macra bouncy castle' at the Ploughing 2024.

In the weather that we had, it proved to be an outstanding choice.

The Ploughing for Macra is an opportunity to showcase what we are and more importantly who we are, whether it was our wall that we invited members and non-members alike to sign, or the bicycle connected to a generator, or the reel-to-reel race (you had to be there to experience it).

We also took the opportunity at the Ploughing to advertise our national raffle that will be going live next week. The prizes for our raffle are a CFMOTO RTV, a cattle crush and a €1,000 holiday voucher.

The tickets will be sold through our clubs with a proportion of the sales going directly to the clubs. Tickets will also be available online in the coming weeks.

The RTV proved so popular an attraction that it was ‘borrowed’ by the Irish Farmers Journal to ferry the one and only Marty Morrissey around the site.

In addition to the fun and social aspect of the Ploughing, there is also the other side of the house where we bring our asks to the Government and opposition alike; we had many political visitors over the week.

Make the Moove

We also had the opportunity to introduce our latest member of staff to the organisation, Conor Holohan, who will in the coming weeks take over as project manager for Make the Moove.

Conor, as a former member of Macra, is well used to our ways and is hitting the ground running. The highlight of the week for me, was those who willingly gave their time so freely and with such passion, our members.

Whether it was rolling up a wire for several hours per day or encouraging the young and not so young to light up the lights with a pedal-powered generator.

I can’t stress enough what the team of volunteers means to Macra, without them there is no Macra.