I farm: “Around 3,000ac of wheat, barley, oats, beans, oilseed rape and potatoes in Naul, Co Dublin.”

Family: “There’s 13 of us farming here in total. There’s myself and my dad. He has five brothers and I have five cousins then too. My aunt Mary works in the office.”

Crops: “We’re focused on rotation. It just so happened that we are all winter crops this year, except for the beans and potatoes.”

This week: “We’re battling in between the weather. We got a field of potatoes planted and it was a struggle. This time last year, we were finished planting. It’s a real challenge for us. The main splits are going on wheat and oats and in the coming week we’ll be doing T1 fungicides on wheat.”

Weather: “We were lucky in the backend with sowing before the weather broke. March and April were terrible.”

Potatoes: “They’re a big challenge. We have main crop with Maris Pipers, Roosters and Cultras. It’s been no go at all. We had a lot of the land ploughed for planting but we got heavy rain and that pushed it back.”

Pressure: “To be honest we were already under pressure, losing chemicals to burn off things. The cost of everything is gone up. Fertiliser is the big one. We’re trying our best to offset that by using mushroom compost, dung and slurry.”

Peadar Whyte with his son PJ in a field of oilseed rape at his farm on The Naul, Co Dublin. \ Lorraine O'Sullivan

Grain prices: “We’re not expecting it to be as good as last year. We can’t go back to €200/t, that’s not going to work. Prices need to be in the high €200s to make it viable.”

Land: “The big challenge for us is access to land. All together we own 1,000ac and 2,000ac is leased or in share-farming. There is big pressure coming from the dairy sector and we can’t compete with it. We also lost 150ac to solar.”

Environment: “We’re trying to reduce our chemical inputs and we use a drone to calculate the nitrogen needed on crops. We’re also working with local beekeepers by having bees on the oilseed rape.”