One strong theme running through the Irish Farmers Journal Crop Tour last week was the importance of Irish grain to the grain merchants and feed mills that we visited.

However, the agronomists we spoke to see the massive flaws in the system. That some feed mills don’t use any Irish grain and have no requirement to use Irish grain through any quality assurance scheme.

The view of James O’Loughlin, an agronomist with Quinns of Baltinglass, was that they want and need traceability in their feed mill and buying Irish is the best way to do that.

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Quinns made a big investment in the feed industry in 2018 when they developed a pellet mill in Baltinglass and James explained the supply of Irish grain into that is essential.

“We’re lucky enough to buy Irish grain off the customers we deal with from one end of the year to the other. The beauty of that is we’re able to supply the farmers with seed, we’re looking after their crops. We’re able to get quality grain back form them and that makes a big difference when it’s going back into the mill.”

Kevin Looby of Denn Feeds had pointed out earlier in the week that it is too easy for feed mills who don’t support Irish grain to go to the port and buy their grain. He suggested that there should be a minimum inclusion rate of Irish grain in animal feed.

Carbon footprint

Research from Teagasc has now proven that Irish grain has a carbon footprint among the lowest in the World. Tillage farmers can now fill out AgNav with their Teagasc adviser, this is a tool to measure their carbon footprint and the more farmers that fill this out the more accurate the measurement of Irish grain’s carbon footprint will be.

However, AgNav will only be of use to tillage farmers if livestock farmers’ carbon footprints take account of the lower carbon footprint of Irish grain.