INTERVIEW

IT was only “a notion” that resulted in Peter Hynes entering the Zurich Farm Insurance Farming Independent Farmer of the Year awards — and it wasn’t even his own notion.

“I was just flicking through the Farming Indo when I saw the ad and I knew he’d never enter it himself, and I really feel he deserved some recognition,” recalled Paula Hynes. She was Peter’s childhood sweetheart, and is now mother to his three girls and an important partner in the growing dairy business.

But “never in a million years” did the couple expect to scoop the top prize at the glitzy awards night in Dublin.

“We were more excited about the prospect of our first ever black-tie event and a night up in Dublin,” said Peter.

But the 42-year-old has defied the odds since he first made the decision seven short years ago to turn his hand to farming.

Neither of the Hynes couple were born into farms, so there was never any expectation that they would chose farming as a career.

But when his stepfather Geofrey Good wanted to step back, Peter and Paula’s love of animals made them natural candidates to take up the reins. In the intervening years the pair have built up one of the top-performing herds in the country.

The 105ha farm just outside the small village of Aherla, 20km west of Cork city, is full of mature trees and charming stone buildings.

But much of the land needed to be reclaimed and there was also huge scope to lift the annual herd average from 240kg milk solids.

Against the advice of many, Peter enrolled himself in the Level 6 dairy course in Clonakilty Agricultural College — a daunting prospect given that he would be nearly twice the age of many of his classmates.

“I already had a Green Cert but I was determined to really learn about what was possible,” said Hynes, who up to that point had been working for Cement Roadstone in a role that required him to manage a team of five.

“That has also really stood to me in that I’m comfortable employing people and managing them,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, Hynes excelled in Clonakilty where he won student of the year, but he is already giving as much back to the college as he ever got from it. “I give the €750 that I get from the Knowledge Transfer programme to the college and get a local company to match it with funding for an annual student award — it’s just so important to give young people a start in this industry, to keep young blood coming in,” he said in a theme that the couple hark back to regularly.

It’s for the same reason that one of the three discussion groups that Peter is involved in was set up by him specifically for young farmers.

“It can be hard for young guys just out of college to get accepted into discussion groups because older farmers feel that the young lads will bring little or no knowledge or figures to the discussion. And I know what it’s like not to know!” he said.

The couple are also members of the Bandon Budgeting group and Moorepark’s Monoculture group that trials single grass varieties for seed companies. The latter has strict financial criteria that requires members to do an annual cashflow and profit monitor.

The involvement in these discussion groups — as well as demonstrating the benefits of a grass measuring kit called the Grasshopper for its Irish developers — takes him away from the farm for about one day a week once the silage is made.

“I get as much out of hosting or visiting farmers as they do from me. Obviously, there’s a financial gain for me in terms of what I do with the Grasshopper and other seed and AI companies, but I’m also learning a little from every visit too.”

Despite the massive strides that the couple have achieved on their farm, 2017 promises to be a major milestone with the start of a €500,000 six-year business plan.

“We were at the end of our tether trying to milk 150 cows