Whether we like it or not, Irish farms are undergoing a quiet revolution and becoming larger. As the older generation retires – the one just above me – their land is eagerly snapped up by others in expansion mode.

It is, of course, dairy expansion which leads the way as herds of 200-plus cows are now commonplace and many herds have gone over the 500-cow mark. Incredibly, almost 50% of the national dairy herd is over 100 cows.

Profit, while essential, isn’t everything and farming being a vocation is not often a road to riches

This expansion appears to be sensible as cows are the most profitable farm enterprise but we’ll see.

Profit, while essential, isn’t everything and farming being a vocation is not often a road to riches. But it presents a good lifestyle if well managed and doesn’t become an end in itself.

Conacre

Even tillage farmers are scaling up at a healthy rate, which surprises me, but hats off to them. Land is, after all, finite and leases and conacre are now very sought after and it’s a hugely competitive process. The perception is, as always, that big is beautiful.

We are back to the Celtic Tiger years with talk of fellows on building sites earning €900 per week into their hands

However, I’ve never believed big is beautiful. Bigger farmers require more labour and skilled labour – indeed any sort of labour – has become very scarce and too costly.

We are back to the Celtic Tiger years with talk of fellows on building sites earning €900 per week into their hands. Farming simply cannot compete at these levels of pay.

Therefore, it seems to me, if you want to be big you have to automate or buy bigger machinery and do most of the work yourself. Robots, rotary parlours and 36m sprayers and such like are seen as the solution. They are to a degree but this will inevitably start the old merry-go-round spinning which leads to more cubicles or a bigger sprayer and then renting more land to justify it and so it goes on.

Then the merry-go-round may spin out of control and you could be thrown off.

To my mind, farming’s future is not all about increasing scale but being the optimum size and doing that extraordinarily well. There is one exception though – pigs. You need lots of pigs to be viable. And those who do pigs well are, in the main, pretty successful. They’re very business-like, never having been spoiled by subsidies.

But a dairy farmer with around 130 cows and a pair of robots should have a good lifestyle and rightly so. This may yet have to increase to around 160 cows but go beyond that and it’s €40,000 a year for an assistant(s) – if you can get him (or her). Then factor in weekends and holidays and a four-day week on the horizon.

Scale

As for the tillage farmer and scale, I’ve always thought that you need to be able to do the three yourself, namely the sowing, spreading and spraying and, ideally, the combining. Once you can no longer do all of these operations yourself your management suffers and costs rise. This suggests the optimum area as being around 500 acres, much more if it’s all around you, less if it’s scattered and you’re on the road a lot.

If you have a family member willing to work for nothing or the minimum wage then happy days

Before you bite my head off, I merely suggest 500 acres as an optimum and appreciate many may work very satisfactorily with less by maximising income from straw and such like.

Of course, if you have a family member willing to work for nothing or the minimum wage then happy days, you can easily double your herd size or area of tillage crops.

Only make sure you take his passport and lock him up at night or else he’ll escape and you’ll be left in the lurch.

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