This week, I started to dry off the first of the autumn calvers. They are entitled to eight weeks holidays, but a few have negotiated an extra fortnight by promising to work harder next season. A few others are retiring and will shortly move to start a new life elsewhere.

I no longer fatten the culls myself. I find they are a very variable group with different levels of flesh cover. While on paper it might make financial sense to feed them, in practice it was time consuming. Johnnes prevention doesn’t recommend grazing older animals with the replacements, so I’d be faced with a multitude of small grazing bunches. Time efficiency is as important as financial.

Efficiency has been my current IFA topic too, with this month seeing the national roll out of the resource efficiency initiative called Smartfarming. As a result I have done a number of print and radio interviews. The majority were for farming press, but also a few reporters who wouldn’t be from a farming background. What interested me was the number of different attitudes to efficient farming.

There is a substantial target of €5,000 savings per farm which should be seen as a chance to increase incomes. I was asked if I was worried there would be a drop in agricultural grant and CAP supports as a result. I was also asked if supermarkets would cut their prices if they saw farmers able to produce food cheaper. Given my interest in the environment, I was questioned whether I would be worried that corners would be cut while trying to achieve that much savings.

These type of questions are useful to focus the mind on the job in hand, which is to make an income from farming. True there are restrictions and regulations compensated by the CAP, but the CAP should never be used as an excuse for inefficient farming. Anyone reading my blog, including last week, will know my opinion on being properly paid for farm produce, so I won’t comment further on price excuses. Finally efficiency should never be used as an excuse to cut corners. The fact is that the financial savings proposed in Smartfarming on energy, grazing, fertilizer, water, etc will all benefit the environment too.

Meanwhile, us Barryroe farmers are busy this week preparing for the local agricultural show on Saturday. It is held on the local GAA pitch and we usually clear everything out on the day, so my milking will probably run late that evening. The plan then is to skip Sunday morning milking and to milk around midday instead. I have used 13 times a week milking before and, while it may feel odd at first, there’s no reason why a bit of relaxation cannot be the result of time efficiency.