As the grazing season comes to an end for many, this week we take a look at PastureBase Ireland figures for grass growth to date for 2020. The average amount of grass grown on farms that are measuring is 10.9t (tonnes) DM/ha. This is down 0.5t DM/ha on the same period in 2019. The decrease can be attributed to the lower grass growth in April, May and early June due to the prolonged dry spell on certain farms.

Looking at county levels, Longford, Waterford and Laois come out on top at 13.7tDM/ha, 11.6tDM/ha and 11.5tDM/ha respectively. However it should be noted that the sample size from Longford is quite small and therefore individual farm changes can have a greater effect on the overall average figure.

Regionally there is just 0.8t DM/ha difference between the top producer, Munster 11.3t DM/ha and the bottom, Ulster at 10.5t DM/ha. This shows that there is a huge potential to grow grass no matter what part of the country you are in.

Dairy farms grew the most amount of grass with an average grass growth figure of 11.1t DM/ha. This was followed by sheep farms at 9.8t DM/ha and beef farms at 9t DM/ha. Again there is huge variability within these numbers with the top third of dairy, sheep and beef farms growing 13.8t DM/ha, 12.7t DM/ha and 11.8t DM/ha respectively. This shows that the top performing farms are growing between 25% and 30% more grass than the average.

The average farm that is measuring grass is more than likely far ahead of those that do not measure grass.

The analysis includes farms that recorded more than 20 farm walks to date this year. In total, 1,560 dairy farms, just 98 beef farms and 20 sheep farms are included.