After securing the 2026 All-Ireland football final on Sunday, Mayo’s 75-year long drought between winning All-Ireland’s is over at last.

When it comes to farming, drought conditions persist in most of Leinster and Munster as rainfall amounts have been largely insignificant in these parts.

As often tends to happen, most of the rain that has fallen over the last couple of days has been to the areas of the country that need it the least.

Because the heatwave has ended, there is sometimes a tendency to think that the effects of the drought is over, but that’s not the case.

On the worst affected farms, average farm cover is down around 300kg/ha and close to 100kg per cow.

This is a seriously low amount of grass and comes as a result of soil moisture deficits exceeding 90mm in the south east, which is as bad in terms of the drought as it was in 2018.

The difference between now and then is that it started earlier and ended earlier in 2018, whereas this year it started later and while the heat wave has ended, we haven’t yet had heavy rain to restore soil moisture.

Sufficient

Looking at the forecast, it doesn’t look like the south east is going to get sufficient rain in the next 10 days either.

Many herds are now on diets consisting of one third silage, one third meal and one third grass, which comes at a big cost.

Farmers in the south east will have to wait longer for the drought to end, hopefully not as long as the 75-year wait like Mayo supporters endured.