Rainfall: you don’t need anyone to tell you that land is wet this week. It’s the time of year for it, but recent days have seen massive amounts of rain in a short space of time.

It will be a good while until land dries out with more rain in the forecast. Amazingly winter crops have held up well, but this week will test them.

Unfortunately, flooding has been widespread across the country. Met Éireann reported on Tuesday that well-drained soils across the country were at field capacity, while many moderately drained soils, particularly in the south-east of the country were saturated.

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All poorly drained soils were reported to be saturated. From 20-26 January 87.6mm of rain fell at Cork Airport and 84.8mm fell at Johnstown Castle. These areas saw the highest rainfall. Rainfall levels were over 300% above average in the southeast, Cork and Dublin in that time.

The coming days is the ideal time to walk the farm and see where drainage work is needed and to see where soil is being lost. Although some areas will have seen so much rain that flooding that rarely occurs will be an issue.

Some fields, particularly on slopes, may be losing soiled water which is literally your soil and phosphorus leaving the field. Is there something that you can do to stop this? Should there be a cover crop on the field? Is a buffer needed to catch this soil like a grass margin or a hedgerow?

Payments: if you have not received your protein or straw payments follow up with your adviser or the Department of Agriculture to see what is the delay. There appears to be a delay with the over-winter cover crop Farming for Water payments as well.

Many of you are asking when the €30m promised for tillage will be paid out and how much it will be. We do not know and there has been no indication what that payment will look like. It is very frustrating for farmers waiting on the payment and looking into the 2026 season without that support.

Malting barley offers: there are cuts across the malting barley sector. It’s a tough time on these growers. There are also rumours of malting barley prices on offer at feed barley prices plus €10/t.

Current malting prices are not far off this, but still, this is not a good offer for malting barley.

Farmers should consider the variety. Is it an older variety limited on yield and overall performance and would you get a higher yield from another variety?

Bottom line is if it is a malting barley variety and you’re being told to grow that variety it can end up in the malting barley chain. If it’s a poor performing variety on yield then you need a proper premium for growing it. Most malting barley varieties have now moved on and while some still don’t hit the heights of feed barley yields they are newer.

If a variety is not on the recommended list there is a reason for this and that is that times have moved on and varieties have improved to give growers a better return.