What is your customer base?

I started in Flynns on 1 May 1998. Back then, customers were predominately full-time farmers. Here in the west of Ireland there are a lot of small farms with fragmented land. With the way agriculture has gone and with decoupling of payments, farmers have become more extensive.

There’s a tradition of mixed farming around here – beef, sheep and tillage. We had a sugar beet factory here in Galway in Tuam that closed in 1985 and farmers would have grown spring barley in rotation with sugar beet. Now farmers predominantly grow spring barley and spring oats. If there’s good weather in the autumn they might sow some winter barley.

Flynns of Lackagh buys in 100% Irish grain. \ Sean Lydon

We have about 15 growers and they supply 6,000t of grain a year, mostly spring cereals with some winter. The number of suppliers has been falling in recent years. We also still buy in wool here from local farmers, which is then sold on to wholesalers in the UK and China.

Does Flynns buy much Irish grain?

We buy 100% Irish grain. We’re not in compound milling, but our biggest supplier is Kiernan Milling in Granard. We buy 80% of our grain off them and they buy feed off us.

Do you see coronavirus having an impact on the business?

It will have an impact, yes. This campus has a SuperValu and Topline hardware store. In retailers, it might swing people into buying more online rather than going out to get their shopping. I don’t really see it affecting the agri department.

How were sales in the last 12 months and are ration prices going up?

In the last 12 months, ruminant feed sales were back 13% on the back of an abundance of good-quality forage last year, coupled with the collapse in beef prices last summer and autumn. Compound feed prices have gone up by €10/t since 1 March.

Fertiliser prices are back by between €30/t and €50/t depending on the product, says Carr. \ Sean Lydon

What has changed over the last 20 years in the business?

The principles in agriculture haven’t changed and won’t change. The product range has increased with calf and lamb starter rations, for example. There would have been a lot of home mixing of rations. Farmers bought pulp, their soyabean meal or distillers grains and mixed it all together at home with home-grown grains.

Is there much demand for protected urea?

Fertiliser prices are back by between €30/t and €50/t, depending on the product. There are one or two dairy farmers using protected urea. The soil pH has to be correct. It’s new territory for us. So far, the farmers are happy with the response of it. By 2022 straight urea will be banned, so it will have to be used then.