The NFRU launched the Irish version of its UK website on Thursday 9 July, after receiving requests from farmers in Ireland to create a dedicated information website for their demographic.

Jacqui Williams, communications spokesperson for the NFRU, says that in the course of the organisation's on-going conversations with in the range of between 8,000 and 9,000 Irish farmers, this was the one thing that came up in conversation on a regular basis.

"We just found that farmers in the Republic and Northern Ireland were very interested in having a sort of one-stop shop for farming information, ranging from grants and other industry news to government reports. Some government reports are very hard to find so we collate all the information that we think will be of use to farmers and we give them that information."

The NFRU is "an independent authority on British and Irish farming, established more than twenty years ago to research the issues that matter to farmers and establish common farm practises and trends".

The new website will cover farming news and information for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

According to Williams, the organisation is currently carrying out telephone interviews with farmers across Ireland and the UK in order to collate their views for the Farmer 2020 database.

Currently the NFRU's database of farmers, which is continuously updated and refined, consists of more than 80,000 farms from the UK and Ireland.

The only research news currently published on the Irish website is winter wheat drilling figures, which shows that the winter wheat cropping area for harvest 2014 was up significantly on its forecast for harvest 2013. In total 83,247 ha were planted in the Republic and 9,170 ha were planted in Northern Ireland by February 2014 compared to 57,805 in the Republic and 3,091 in Northern Ireland in 2013.