Our sector can prosper if we act on Wallace report

Some of the findings in Professor Michael Wallace’s report on tillage bear repeating: the tillage industry in Ireland has been valued at €1.3 billion, supports 11,000 fulltime equivalent jobs and is by far the most carbon-efficient of our main agricultural sectors.

First off I have to declare an interest, as I am a representative of the independent consultants within Tillage Industry Ireland, the organisation that commissioned the report.

However, the industry is in decline in Ireland. The area under tillage has declined by 15pc over the last decade, and by 42pc since 1980.

Over that time, while the number of specialist tillage growers has broadly been maintained, the number of ‘non-specialist tillage growers’ the quintessential mixed farm has fallen by 40pc.

This has come against a background of increasing demand for concentrate feedstuffs for animal feed; for food and drink of Irish provenance such as beer, whiskey; and from a growing population for bread, potatoes and other basic foods.

These are not healthy figures. Something is wrong and it needs to be fixed.

So where to we go from here?

The first question we have to ask is, as a nation, do we want or even need a tillage industry in Ireland at all? Can we not just increase the output of beef and dairy products and import everything else: the food we eat; the concentrate feed for our livestock; the raw ingredients for our ‘Irish’ beers and whiskeys?

We have to answer this question honestly and without any platitudes. Experience over the past few years has shown that this question needs to be raised.

There is evidence to show that at national and EU level, the deck is being increasingly stacked against a viable and vibrant tillage industry.

Now assuming we want to maintain a tillage industry, how do we go about doing that?

A focus on developing crops for deficit markets is one objective. Protein crops, seed potato production, fresh chip potatoes and organic tillage crops are markets that spring to mind.

I’m often asked by growers is there any other crop ‘out there’ that they should grow. The answer is that in Ireland we can grow practically any crop we want to. We have fertile soils, temperate climate and plenty of water. Growing a crop is rarely the problem.

Selling the crop, consistently; getting paid for the crop; and getting paid enough for the crop are the three hurdles that most new crops fail on.

We need to develop a robust structure to counterbalance this problem before we get growers to invest.

Another focus of our energies should be to tweak and develop a quality assurance scheme that can link in to existing food, beef, dairy, sheep, poultry and pig schemes.

Existing quality assurance schemes are playing ducks and drakes with the sourcing of concentrate feed that goes into their assured produce. They are playing ducks and drakes with our industry, and that has to stop.

The Wallace report has definitively shown the positive position that tillage holds in relation to low carbon emissions, protecting water quality, enhancing biodiversity and the potential to develop a sustainable agricultural model in Ireland.

Some of this is new information, much we already knew. This has to be shouted from the rafters.

Any environmental programme has to have genuine tillage input into its development.

For example the current GLAS scheme has wild bird cover as an option. When sown in tillage areas the crop normally grows beautifully, with lush, photogenic linseed, oats and triticale crops. But they are often a dessert to wildlife as there is more than enough food for seed-eating birds in the region anyway.

When the option is chosen in grass-growing regions, more often than not they look a disaster, with poor emergence, proliferating weeds and inspection sanctions the norm. But as they provide a different habitat to the surrounding region they are a haven for wildlife, the prime objective of the scheme.

The Wallace report has laid out the bare facts of the industry as it stands. By so doing it provides the opportunity to infer where the industry is headed into the future.

If nothing is done, the declining figures outlined in the report will continue until we have no tillage industry left.

If we focus on the positives of the report the existing (increasing) markets on our doorstep, developing new markets and making tillage a critical component of a sustainable, environmentally sound agricultural industry

the tillage industry will prosper.

The choice is ours.