The last few days have allowed many tillage farmers across the country to move out to fields as good weather prevailed. However, land has been slow to dry in many places, delaying progress.

The forecast includes showers for the weekend and into next week, but hopefully a large area will be planted in the coming days. Spring barley is the main crop on the agenda.

A survey of agronomists across the country, carried out by the Irish Farmers Journal on Monday, 17 April, showed that in general the maximum area of spring cereals planted in any area of the country was 50% and on average, from those in our survey, just 28% of spring cereals were planted at that time.

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However, many farmers across the country have no spring crops planted at all, and large areas have yet to see spring cereals drilled in the northwest and northeast of the country.

In some parts of the northeast, 10-15% of spring cereals were reported to be sown. However, many have yet to plant beans, which will be a priority, and many in these regions had not been able to work in fields on Tuesday of this week as land was still not dry enough. Around Co Down, 15-20% of spring cereals were reported to be planted.

Midlands

In the midlands, planting progress ranged from 20% to 50%, but good progress was being made this week. Moving further over to south Kilkenny and Tipperary, planting progress ranged from 40-65%.

In east and south Cork, figures varied from 25-50%, while north Cork saw lower levels of planting at a maximum of 30%.

In parts of Co Wexford, 20% of crops were in, and this rose to 50% in some places, but in south Wexford many farmers have a lot of work to do.

Potatoes are now a priority as we move into late April. Some farmers are planning to increase maize and beet area slightly to reduce workload and spread risk away from spring cereals.

There also seems to be more interest in arable silage in some places.