Why other farm sectors can’t afford to let Irish tillage wither
This is not an easy year in which to increase the national tillage area: it is very wet, seed is scarce, prices are on the floor, costs are too high, and grower enthusiasm is alarmingly low.
But maybe it’s exactly the right time. If we can increase the area against these headwinds, we can rest assured we have a sustainable, viability industry on our hands.
However, the negativity surrounding the sector raises the spectre of whether we will even have a tillage industry in the country in 10 years’ time.
We don’t have to get to the last acre before a sector is gone. There is a figure of a national area below which it is simply unviable to be serviced.
Upstream services such as seed assembly, variety evaluation, pesticide development and distribution, machinery development and distribution are expensive undertakings and need a certain turnover in order to remain viable.
Once the downstream buyers, storage, processors and users of grain go below a certain volume, they just shut the doors and meet their needs at the port.
The question has to be asked is, what would the entire Irish agricultural industry look like without a tillage sector?
Firstly, the two million tonnes currently being produced here would need to be imported. That’s an additional 10,000t of phosphorus coming in on a boat, to add to the 30,000t currently coming in as fertiliser and 20,000t as imported feedstuffs.
Annual loading
Managing an annual loading of 60,000t of P on our little island, with no tillage crops to deplete soil reserves, would be challenging.
Meanwhile, the area currently under tillage would probably be used for livestock production, increasing the national emissions profile and increasing demand for animal feedstuffs. It would be nigh-on impossible to take all this on and at the same time improve water quality enough to retain our derogation.
We would also have the inconvenient truth of more than 7m tonnes of imported feedstuffs, brought in at the lowest price from anywhere in the world, when we are selling the guff of grass-based beef and dairy production.
Our global competitors would not keep schtum on Ireland becoming merely a transfer of Brazilian grain protein to animal protein.
The emissions profile of our meat and dairy products would be difficult to defend.
From a biodiversity perspective, how many birds, mammals, plants and insects would simply disappear from the environment if tillage disappeared?
The loss of the tillage sector would have a long-term impact on agriculture and the environment much wider than just the loss of tillage producers. From a water quality, emissions profile and biodiversity perspective, the sector simply must be retained and developed and allowed to prosper.
This won’t happen by accident. Strong policy initiatives need to be agreed, implemented and supported as a matter of urgency. The success of the entire agricultural sector is dependent on it.