Resowing or replanting should be the “last option” tillage farmers with bare crops should consider, Shay Phelan, crops specialist with Teagasc has said.

Teagasc held a winter crop walk in Oak Park, Carlow, on Tuesday, advising farmers how to assess and manage bare or patchy crops. In response to a question from a farmer who asked if it was viable to continue with a crop which hasn’t established well, Phelan said that farmers shouldn’t replant “just for the neighbours”, as everybody has patches in their fields this year.

“It’s really an imponderable question at the moment, because you don’t know what you’re going to be able to replace it with – whether you’ll get the seed for it or not. Resowing or replanting, to me would be the last option if I can at all.

“If you’re resowing, it’s already got a cultivation, it’s already got ploughed, it got seed and it may have also got a herbicide – so you’re stacked up with costs of €250/ha to €300/ha,” said Phelan.