Rain has been welcomed in most parts of the country over the last few days and has meant the risk of fire on uplands has subsided a little for now.

Other areas have recorded very little rain and are still crying out for it. Lessons need to be learned from what happened over the last few weeks.

Listening to our special Irish Farmers Journal podcast over the weekend, you couldn’t help but ask the question, have we lost the knowledge and the skills required for managing our uplands and with further flight from the hills taking place, will these problems only get bigger in the future? Some of the farmers interviewed spoke about controlled burning and firebreaks being used in the past to break the path of a fire.

This knowledge is unique to an area and we shouldn’t discount it when it comes to dealing with issues. With less people farming in these areas, you also wonder what would have happened if the farmers with their slurry tankers hadn’t arrived and worked through the night.

Would houses have been lost or worse still, could lives have been lost? The ideal situation is that everybody works together for a desired outcome, but sometimes there are unintended consequences to policy that policymakers don’t take account of.

People focused

As our climate changes, so too should policy, but it’s important to bring people along and make sure that no particular sectors become alienated by policy decisions.

Our climate is changing. This week’s Met Éireann release of the July weather figures are further confirmation of that. According to Met Éireann, July 2026 was the second hottest July on record since 1900, with Johnstown Castle in Co Wexford having the driest and sunniest month on record. Moorepark in Co Cork and Oakpark in Co Carlow also had their driest and hottest months on record.

Farmers are some of the first people to bear the brunt of climate change. Food production and farming practices are adapting in line with a changing climate.

Farmers are as concerned as anybody, and most recognise that practices must change if we are to combat climate change. Leaving it to another person or another country isn’t an option and everyone must take responsibility for their own actions.

Incentivising those actions is where policy comes in, and both the EU and national governments will play a central role in formulating policy and incentivising action on farms. Farmers have reacted to policy in the past and will do so again – timely action is needed.

Low yields

We also see reports this week that horticulture crops are really struggling. We are looking at one of the lowest yields for the Irish potato crop for decades as a result of reduced crop areas and the effects of the drought.

The problem isn’t isolated to Ireland, with wildfires raging across Europe. There are also huge issues with the vegetable crop in the UK. The UK National Farmers Union last week called for water supplies to be prioritised for food production and farming as the situation had gotten that bad.

Over 40% of our vegetable requirements come from the UK, so any upset to supply will have an impact on Irish access to vegetables.

Across Europe, it’s a similar story with heatwaves decimating crop yields across both commercial tillage and horticulture farms.

The end result will be higher costs to consumers if they want access to the year round supply of vegetables and horticultural products.

The current situation also poses questions around food security and the EU direction of shipping out food production requirements to other countries as part of trade deals.

Cold wet winters and hot dry summers inducing drought conditions right across the country are becoming more common, and with that management will need to change to adapt to new ways of farming in a new climate. During the 2018 drought, there were incentives put in place to plant fodder crops on tillage land to boost winter fodder supplies.

Is there a case to be made for extending fertiliser application dates to boost grass growth in autumn? Many farmers haven’t been able to spread fertiliser for weeks now and until sufficient rain comes, best practice is not to spread.