Like every farmer in Ireland, and probably Europe too, I’ve had my fair share of dealing with officialdom in the form of the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine. Or as everyone simply calls it, “The Department”.
Last week brought the first face-to-face meeting when a Department man called to check sheep tags. I saw on his form later that it was in fact an SMR8 inspection. SMR stands for Statutory Management Requirement, and there are 13 of them that can be checked as part of cross-compliance.
SMR8 refers to the sheep and goat identification and registration. Put simply, the tags in the ewes’ ears, and our flock register and movement documents were going to be checked against official Department records.
While I am not 100% sure how these were checked and verified, my abiding memory of this first on-farm inspection is the Department man himself.
We have all heard horror stories about difficult inspectors. (I struggled here to think of a polite phrase since the usual descriptions could not be printed in a reputable newspaper).
No doubt such impossible-to-please inspectors exist. But the man who called to our place was a gentleman. He could not have been more pleasant to deal with and is a credit to the Department that sent him out.
The inspection itself went fine. After the various checks, and a quick cup of tea, I was relieved to hear he had identified no serious issues.
Field work
Away from the paperwork, we are working on what can only be described as reclaiming another field. To call it reseeding would not do the work justice.
Rushes have been mulched, drains cleaned, the whole lot sprayed off, and by the time you read this, it will have been mole-ploughed.
Despite it being late in the year, we will set fodder rape in this field. One reason for this is that there is plenty trash on the ground in the form of mulched rushes.
Discing will help break these down further, but our thinking is fodder rape will germinate better than grass seed in such a bed.
The subsequent grass sward will hopefully also benefit from the fodder crop being sown. We will set a simple, four-year, herbal ley next March or April, and the seedbed then should be much more accommodating to this multi-species grass mix.
Another factor in deciding on the rape is any sort of a decent yield will allow us to out-winter weanlings on it. A poor yield and it will do the sheep pre-lambing.
That is the theory; we will have to see how the reality plays out.
Beef protests
The same could be said for the ongoing beef protests. In theory, protesting should bring the processors to the negotiating table, but the reality is that farmers v factories is not a fair fight.
Processors won the war years ago when they moved the battleground away from cattle lorries and wellingtons, and into carpeted offices and pinstripe suits.
They used their substantial influence to strengthen their position. All this is before the mergers and acquisitions of processing plants that has reduced competition for farmers’ produce.
I may have had a pleasant experience with a visiting Department inspector this week, but the farming community overall has not experienced much pleasantness from the upper echelons of the same Department, which has created a policy environment that leaves thousands of livestock farmers on the brink.
Read more
Farmer Writes: margins as thin as the gable-end of a five euro note
Farmer Writes: backside has fallen out of sheep trade
Farmer Writes: looking back for future plans
Like every farmer in Ireland, and probably Europe too, I’ve had my fair share of dealing with officialdom in the form of the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine. Or as everyone simply calls it, “The Department”.
Last week brought the first face-to-face meeting when a Department man called to check sheep tags. I saw on his form later that it was in fact an SMR8 inspection. SMR stands for Statutory Management Requirement, and there are 13 of them that can be checked as part of cross-compliance.
SMR8 refers to the sheep and goat identification and registration. Put simply, the tags in the ewes’ ears, and our flock register and movement documents were going to be checked against official Department records.
While I am not 100% sure how these were checked and verified, my abiding memory of this first on-farm inspection is the Department man himself.
We have all heard horror stories about difficult inspectors. (I struggled here to think of a polite phrase since the usual descriptions could not be printed in a reputable newspaper).
No doubt such impossible-to-please inspectors exist. But the man who called to our place was a gentleman. He could not have been more pleasant to deal with and is a credit to the Department that sent him out.
The inspection itself went fine. After the various checks, and a quick cup of tea, I was relieved to hear he had identified no serious issues.
Field work
Away from the paperwork, we are working on what can only be described as reclaiming another field. To call it reseeding would not do the work justice.
Rushes have been mulched, drains cleaned, the whole lot sprayed off, and by the time you read this, it will have been mole-ploughed.
Despite it being late in the year, we will set fodder rape in this field. One reason for this is that there is plenty trash on the ground in the form of mulched rushes.
Discing will help break these down further, but our thinking is fodder rape will germinate better than grass seed in such a bed.
The subsequent grass sward will hopefully also benefit from the fodder crop being sown. We will set a simple, four-year, herbal ley next March or April, and the seedbed then should be much more accommodating to this multi-species grass mix.
Another factor in deciding on the rape is any sort of a decent yield will allow us to out-winter weanlings on it. A poor yield and it will do the sheep pre-lambing.
That is the theory; we will have to see how the reality plays out.
Beef protests
The same could be said for the ongoing beef protests. In theory, protesting should bring the processors to the negotiating table, but the reality is that farmers v factories is not a fair fight.
Processors won the war years ago when they moved the battleground away from cattle lorries and wellingtons, and into carpeted offices and pinstripe suits.
They used their substantial influence to strengthen their position. All this is before the mergers and acquisitions of processing plants that has reduced competition for farmers’ produce.
I may have had a pleasant experience with a visiting Department inspector this week, but the farming community overall has not experienced much pleasantness from the upper echelons of the same Department, which has created a policy environment that leaves thousands of livestock farmers on the brink.
Read more
Farmer Writes: margins as thin as the gable-end of a five euro note
Farmer Writes: backside has fallen out of sheep trade
Farmer Writes: looking back for future plans
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