I had known that Apple, the US tech giant, was applying for planning permission to build a huge data centre in Athenry. Data centres are being built because of the Irish climate. The fact that it is bogged down in planning while its Danish counterpart is fully built is neither here nor there except to suggest that the Irish planning process needs a real revamp. However, Apple is not alone and there are several large similar facilities within 10 to 15 miles of Dublin. Data centres are enormous and energy intensive. The servers need to be kept at reasonably constant temperatures where not too much energy is needed for air conditioning in summer or heating in winter. Ireland’s climate is ideal for this, but it is also ideal for grass and cereals.

With the development of fungicides and agri chemistry, our yields of cereals are among the highest in the world but we are also one of the few countries where grass plays the key role in the production of milk and beef.

The implications of the exceptional importance of perennial grass and its relative lack of importance elsewhere means that the research dollars are on the grain side. However, we need real research on grain to help us get over the comparatively small size of our grain farms and the particular European scepticism of both GMOs and many of the active ingredients at present used in Irish and European cereal production.

It was with all these factors in the back of my mind that I was delighted to be asked to speak at the launch of Seedtech’s new €6m facility at Belview port just outside Waterford. I had not realised that DLF, the Danish co-operative which has a working relationship with Seedtech, is trialling in Waterford more than 3,000 different varieties of grass and clover to assess their suitability under Irish conditions.

With ever-declining real prices of grain, if we do not get continuing productivity increases in grass, our competitiveness will slip.

On the grain side, we need constant developments in varieties to allow us to produce what our world class brewing and distilling companies need. From a farmer’s point of view, we also need the premiums that these companies are in a position to earn from the quality and the guarantees provided by Irish cereal growers.

One of the inescapable trends in the elimination of active ingredients will be a greater reliance on plant breeding, resistance to key diseases and also more development and use of seed dressings using, in many cases, naturally occurring chemicals and organisms.

We are already seeing rhizobias similar to those on clover letting barley trap an increasing proportion of the nitrogen it needs from the atmosphere.

Also, with our long growing season, we can produce rapeseed that is larger and more robust and thus more suitable for use in countries with extreme climate variation.

The new Seedtech facility, owned and financed by the Power family, will let seed with these new characteristics be cleaned, sorted and dressed to measures of purity and consistency that should serve the Irish cereal and grass seed industries well into the future. I for one wish the new venture every success.