DEAR EDITOR,

Tillage can’t take much more. I am contacting you about the current tillage crisis in this country. I am a young, full-time tillage farmer from Cork. I am one of the few who have stuck at the job down through the years with the hope that it will get better. But it’s worse and worse it’s getting, and the Government is doing nothing about it.

Where will grain, straw and beet come from when all the tillage farmers are gone broke? We’re hanging on by a thread. We work as hard as any other farmers sowing crops, looking after crops, repairing our machinery, seeing after the land, but we are not being rewarded for it.

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The Government and Minister Heydon have totally ignored the warnings from IFA, the Irish Grain Growers Group and the Irish Farmers Journal about support for tillage.

The co-ops have come out with prices for green barley under the cost of production and Boortmalt has come out with prices under the cost of production for malting barley.

The next time our politicians pass a load of golden straw, I want them to just think about the farmer that has lost money producing it. Its quite simple, something has to be done to help tillage farmers. The minister didn’t listen and this problem is not going to go away.

Barley and wheat remain in stores in this country from the harvest of 2024 and boatloads are being imported weekly. Something has to be done as soon as possible to add value to Irish grain.

We’re not looking to become millionaires, even €20-30/t would make a massive difference.

There has to be an incentive for the co-ops and for the farmer to use Irish grain in their rations.

Every day, we talk about climate change. Look at the emissions and the damage that is being done shipping grain from hundreds of miles away into this country. A farmer in Tralee wouldn’t order straw from Wexford if it could be got in Cork. Common sense must prevail here.

Most businesses can take a bad year or two. We have had three consecutive bad years and we can’t take much more.