The IFA is this week continuing with its campaign to highlight issues around the quality of imported grains.

While it has proved successful to date, the underlying issue where farmers are buying rations without a detailed breakdown of the ingredients needs to be tackled.

Full transparency around what is included within rations will only be provided when millers are required to give a percentage breakdown of all ingredients along with the country of origin.

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Farmers across every sector are expected to produce to demanding specifications with full transparency throughout the production system. It is time that service providers were forced to do the same.

Meanwhile, the issue of merchant/co-op margins still needs to be tackled. With green prices likely to settle around €125/t, there should be no reason why livestock farmers should not be able to access rolled barley from between €160 and €175/t – at this price, rolled barley represents one of the best value energy sources on the market and, for many, much cheaper than grass silage.