Admittedly, when I read the front page my initial thought was that this must be a recent copy. Plastered across the front was the headline: “New pre-movement TB test proposed.” Among the TB blackspots at the time were Monaghan, Clare and west Wicklow.

Looking inside, the supplement Farming Beyond 2000 caught my attention, so I took a flick through it to see what the agri experts of the day envisaged for Irish farming.

“Automation will be the order of the day with robotic milking palaces leading the way” has proven fairly accurate.

The crystal ball gazing went awry when predicting the number of active farmers would half from 130,000 to 65,000 by 2020

There’s a fair share of truth in “bureaucracy will have proliferated so every single facet of farming would be traceable as demanded by consumers”. The fortune tellers weren’t far off the mark when saying “developing IT will make this a routine”.

The crystal ball gazing went awry when predicting the number of active farmers would half from 130,000 to 65,000 by 2020, with less than 10,000 of these full-time commercial farmers.

The experts also got it wrong about consumers overcoming their hang-ups about GMOs, while talk of cloning super dairy cows and suckler cows having twin calves to order proved a bit fanciful.

Costs

Challenges then such as increased costs and reduced availability of labour are still issues and the potential usefulness of partnerships was given an airing although there was a feeling this would be more along the lines of family partnerships rather than the current collaboration options available.

The European section of the paper had an eye-catching headline

No one foresaw the ending of milk quotas, the loss of sugar beet processing, or Brexit.

The European section of the paper had an eye-catching headline: “Black tea as a cure for calf scour.”

After struggling with different antibiotics and bacterial resistance, German dairy farmer Herman Hanewinkel believed that warm black tea and honey was a better cure for scour in young calves. With current concerns on antimicrobial resistance, Herr Hanewinkel was ahead of his time.