On Monday afternoon I headed for Carlow and the first of the Farm Financially Fit seminars being organised by Teagasc and its 22 partners in this initiative. A huge amount of thought and work has gone into organising these five events. It’s all been with the aim of helping families cope with the pressure of running a farming business.

I was glad to see a good turnout of farm women because it’s often women who do most if not all of the paperwork on farms.

Dr Thia Hennessy of Teagasc set down the challenge when she said that roughly 35,000 farming families were not sustainable. By this she meant that there wasn’t a viable income from these farms and there was no off-farm income to help make up the deficit. That’s almost one in three farming families in the country. While that’s a huge number, it’s a wonder it isn’t higher. I say this because Sarah Bourke, who was speaking on behalf of Social Justice Ireland, said a minimum standard of income in rural Ireland for a family of two adults and two children was about €30,000 a year. Given the small scale of farming, especially in the livestock sector, it’s hard to see how many families could reach that income level without a substantial contribution from off-farm employment or farm diversification of some sort.

Over the years, Irish Country Living has featured hundreds of farming families who have taken the latter route and most of them have done very well. However, one of the big stumbling blocks to going the diversification route is access to capital. This equally applies to farm families who want to expand their enterprise. So the €200m fund at low interest rates that’s to be made available to farmers and agri and rural businesses has to be welcomed.

Interestingly, Thia Hennessy said borrowings on Irish farms were quite low in comparison to New Zealand and across the EU. However, she said that over the next few years Irish farmers are expected to invest a massive €1.2bn in expanding to meet the targets set by Harvest 2020. But before this money is spent, she said it was important to ask the question: what difference will this investment make to your family income? Ask the questions and plan soundly before making any move, she warned. Lots of simple advice was given, including getting your Basic Payments Scheme application in on time. It sounds crazy but hundreds, if not thousands, of farmers will leave this to the last day. It wasn’t so bad when the penalty was 1% but now it’s an eye-watering 4% that nobody can afford to lose.

Changing the subject, congratulations to the Irish men’s and women’s rugby teams for doing the country proud last weekend. I’d been working outside and intended to stay there and listen to the Ireland match on the radio. But I made the mistake of coming in for tea and ended up watching both the Irish and English matches. So that put an end to Saturday. While I’m at it, congratulations to Cistercian College Roscrea, the team and all involved in rugby in the school on winning their first ever Leinster Senior Cup. It’s been a long time coming and so very well deserved.

Finally, the latest issue of Irish Country Magazine will hit the shops this week. It has Aisling O’Loughlin of Xposé on the cover and it’s just gorgeous. Enjoy the read.