Food industry crucial to "knowledge economy''

By Darragh Mullin

22 March 08 : The annual Agricultural Research Forum is a joint Teagasc-UCD initiative which took place last week in the Tullamore Court Hotel. This year there was a record number of 85 oral presentations and 75 poster presentations.

The development of the Food and Agriculture industry is crucial to Ireland's future development as a knowledge economy. However, research funding, and the capacity of the industry to absorb new technology, will have a bearing on the success of the industry going forward. This was the view of a panel of speakers who included Professor Patrick Cunningham, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Shane Ward, head of the School of Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine and Food Science, UCD and Professor Gerry Boyle, Director of Teagasc.

In a paper entitled 'Small Country - Big Ambitions', Professor Cunningham outlined the Government's policy on developing the country as a knowledge economy, including a target to double the number of post graduate students by 2013. He stated that, currently, OECD ratings rank Ireland in an average position on the table with other developed nations.

Professor Cunningham also stated that Government policy within the 'Strategy for Science Technology and Innovation' (SSTI) Paper is to elevate the Irish economy to the same position as the benchmark Scandinavian countries in terms of research and development and output.

In response, Professor Shane Ward told the audience how UCD are responding to the challenge set out by the SSTI to become a world leader in third level education and research.

However, Professor Ward stated that there is one issue that could undermine UCD achieving their aims - money. "The reality is that we are under-funded'', to which he added there is effectively a linear relationship between the quality of output and per capita input. "Ireland, as Professor Cunningham has already stated, spends considerably less on research than other benchmark countries,'' he said.

The challenge, Professor Boyle stated, is for Teagasc to renew and review the types of post graduate programmes and improve the quality of Doctoral candidates that are recruited by Teagasc. Professor Boyle also said that within the food industry in Ireland there is a deficit in "absorptive capacity'' for the amount of output that is produced from the research process. If not addressed at policy level, this will severely impair the productivity of the food industry, he said.

Research forum round-up

By Matt Dempsey

Round bale silage - additives usually required

Because of the chopping and bruising the grass receives, precision crop silage is usually of higher quality than big bale silage. Fermentation and desirable increase in acidity are both quicker in precision chop material.

Big bales of long unchopped material have more fungal growth and higher butyric acid and ammonia N. The experimental results from using either a formic acid based additive or a lactic acid innoculant show that the quality of the silage was significantly improved and approached the value of comparable precision chop material.

Slat mats revisited

At the Grange Open Day two years ago there was major controversy when an experiment showed no benefit from rubber mats on slats. The experiment has now been repeated in more detail.

The performance of 500kg steers fed for 150 days was measured - there were slats, three types of mat and an outwintering pad. Broadly, the outwintering pads and mat type 1 were best in terms of kill out, feed conversion and liveweight gain per day. Mat types 2 & 3 were not significantly worse than mat type 1. In all the mat trials, there were a greater number of hoof lesions than animals on slats or outwintering pads. While animals on the outwintering pads had the highest liveweight gain and carcase weights, they also ate more and so their feed conversion efficiency, while better than those on slats, was about the same for the three mat types.

Close grazing

On grazing management in dairy cows the Moorepark team seem to be in the process of moving away from the former recommendation of leaving a high stubble after grazing to help regrowth to a pre-grazing height of 15.8 cms or 2,300kg of grass/ha.

With 68 cows in the trial the numbers involved were significant. The higher results achieved in terms of yield, fat content, protein content and bodyscore condition change would all support grazing down to a level of 4.3 cms instead of the more normal recommendation of 5.5cms.

Bulls versus steers

The efficiency of bulls versus steers was graphically illustrated on one of the poster exhibits. The results showed a carcase gain/day for the steers of 548gms. Gain for the bulls was 934 gms and a gain per unit of energy in the feed of 1.56gms for the bulls to 0.81gms for the steers. No wonder the proportion of bulls in the national kill at this time of the year is expanding so rapidly.

Wet land dairying

Increasing grazing days beyond 220 days is a realistic target in the heavy land areas of the country but it requires more farming skill and attention to detail than in the traditional Moorepark type conditions. Flexibility of grazing and drainage was important. The key is making maximum use of grass between March and November. In the comparison with high concentrate use, the output of milk per hectare went up from 11,200kg to 17,000 so clearly concentrate cost is pivotal.

GM advantage in autumn

GM oilseed rape sown in the autumn has a significant profit advantage over conventional oilseed rape because of the high cost of herbicides. There is no advantage in the case of spring oilseed rape.

Risk premium for Miscanthus

To grow miscanthus, farmers should expect a "risk premium'' in income terms over and above that which you could expect from spring barley. The crop costs a lot to establish and the returns are still vague - unless there are firm contracts. In addition, miscanthus pellets seem to need a special form of boiler and flue because of the high chlorine levels in the plant.