Failure to accept climate change is causing our fodder crisis this spring

‘Icould sell 1,000 bales of silage after last night’s rain.” It was this comment from a contractor that stopped me in my tracks.

I knew the weather was making on-farm conditions difficult across the country but between that comment and a visit to a few other farms, the desperation many farmers are starting to feel — even in my relatively dry corner of Limerick — has hit home.

The unrelenting rain has been depressing enough but for farmers facing a disappearing silage pit or trying to call around for non-existent straw to calve the last few cows or lamb ewes, it’s a nightmare.

Within a few hundred yards might be a field of grass but ground conditions mean that any animal let into it is likely to need evacuation via Noah’s ark.

Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has called together the National Fodder and Food Security Committee to discuss the worsening situation but given it’s already hit emergency levels on some farms, it’s too late for that.

An emergency plan can be drawn together but what we need now is a plan for next year.

The rain we’re seeing is simply the truth of what we’ve been warned about — climate change. We’re facing wetter springs and summer droughts.

In previous times we could have banked on one bad spring every five years but now I reckon we’ll be lucky if we get one good spring out of five bad ones.

Last year, I took the money given to the farm through the Fodder Support Scheme and did something we’d never done before — made a second cut of silage.

Even though I had serious misgivings about the price of making silage, it was one of my better farm management decisions.

We have enough silage to last until the end of May, if we need it, but it’s not something I feel any great contentment about because every farm is facing the exact same issues that it faced this time last year.

Unpredictable weather (whether from a deluge or a drought) and rising contractors costs.

You can throw into the mix the fact that it is almost impossible for livestock farmers to get hold of decent straw for bedding animals.

Squeezed out

Again, this is exactly what tillage farmers warned us would happen if they kept being squeezed out of the land market and could get more value out of ploughing straw back into the ground through the incorporation measure than selling it.

Livestock farmers are getting so fed up with straw shortages that I’ve met more than one who plans on baling rushes this summer and mixing it with straw to help eke it out.

I hope that the sun suddenly shines and the looming crisis is averted but that doesn’t stop the fact that if it does, it will be a near miss for many.

If the National Fodder and Food Security Committee is serious about planning for the future then the Fodder Support Measure is going to have to be doubled to take into account rising contractors fees and ensure that farmers make enough silage or hay this summer to replenish exhausted reserves. There’s also going to have to be some kind of measure introduced to encourage tillage farmers to sell straw or help livestock farmers buy it.

Not having good quality, dry straw to bed animals — particularly when they’re newborn — is asking for a whole host of serious animal welfare issues.

Another consideration is farmers’ mental health. It’s been covered in detail many times and gets bandied about like a shiny tick-box exercise at farm conferences.

But when you’re standing in a competent farmer’s yard and that farmer is getting emotional as they apologise for not having more straw under their animals and explain that it’s because they simply can’t get hold of it and they can’t get the animals out because of the rain, and they don’t know what to do, then the reality of what “farmer mental health” means hits home.

The distress farmers feel if they think they can’t adequately take care of their animals is gut wrenching.

Sometimes, farmers are portrayed as uncaring towards their livestock, but I can guarantee you that every farmer pays a visit to the vet more regularly on behalf of their animals in a year, than they do to the dentist or the doctor for themselves.

For anyone struggling, I hope that the minister announces measures to help farmers get their hands on silage and straw to get through this spring, but there’s going to have to be a lot more thought and effort put into getting us through the next one and the ones after that.