Farmer Writes: a trip to Brussels and cows dried off

We have nearly all the cows dried off now here in Abbeyleix, with the last 50 going to be dried on Monday. We started to dig out for the collecting yard tank on Tuesday. We finished up grazing last week with an average farm cover (AFC) of 850kg DM/ha.

I could have grazed another paddock, but that would have dropped my AFC to around 700kg DM/ha, and that paddock was near the yard so I would rather keep it for the spring, as we usually don’t have a problem getting out to grass and getting it grazed.

I was in Brussels two weeks ago with my discussion group and we visited the European Parliament and a local farm. We had a good discussion with some of our MEPs and we all felt that there is more positivity than was previously felt.

Fighting hard

They all said they know how important keeping the nitrates derogation is, and that they will be fighting hard to keep it and show how unique we are as a nation compared to the rest of Europe at producing milk from grazed grass.

It is going to be a political decision to keep it or not, so it is up to our MEPs and lobbying groups to ensure it is retained.

There is good positivity around the appointment of the new Commissioner for Agriculture from Luxembourg, and hopefully, this will benefit us as a country. We also had a lot of discussion about the major TB issue in our country, which has affected most members of our group.

The MEPs say they agree that the TB issue should not be the problem it is.

They say they will be working hard to find solutions and get a vaccine into use. Hopefully they will make significant progress on this issue and get some proper answers and solutions for farmers.

The farmer we visited told us Belgium has been TB-free for 10 years, why can’t our Government learn from this and other countries who have become TB-free and maintain it? Live export was also a topic brought up, as there has been some bad publicity in the press on this.

Granted some of the negativity has been justified, but it does not portray the majority of Irish dairy farms. I know that here we treat all calves the same and they are cared for to an extremely high standard, as it should be on all farms. Irish farmers can’t be held accountable and suffer because other countries not enforcing the same high standards we do.

Once again the MEPs said they know how important the live export market is for Irish calves and they are working to make practical rules regarding journey times and transportation.

The farm we visited was a mixed farm with a lot of different moving parts. There were 60 high-yielding cows, fully indoors being milked by a robot. The cows average 11,000 litres per year with approximately 820kg of milk solids from around 3.5t of concentrates.

The farmer said milk price was around 45-50c/l and his costs were 35-40c/l. It is a family farm with the son having recently taken over from the father, and his wife and mother are involved in the farm also.

They are farming 100ha, with sugar beet, wheat and maize grown. The sugar beet is a commercial crop and not used for feed. The wheat is also sold but the straw is kept for use in the dairy enterprise along with the maize and grass silage.

They also have a milk vending machine, which they have be running for 10 years. They sell approximately 400l per week through this. They also have a farm shop, which his mother runs, and they sell their own cheese and ice cream through this.

The farmer said the vending machine and shop take 10% of his milk production and return the same amount of money as the other 90%.

He had a lot of machinery and did most of his own field work as he said contractors had become very expensive. He also had a mobile chicken unit, from which the eggs were sold locally. This had 180 hens and was returning around €30,000 per year.

We all felt he was very busy and had a lot of different things going on, when he said he hadn’t gone on a holiday since his honeymoon, this confirmed it. It was a great trip overall and great to see a snippet of how the parliament works.

It was great to get away as a group but, unfortunately, one of the lads thought he could fly on an expired passport, but luckily his wife saved the day, better late than never, Bernard.