Editorial: Cereals – Department trials importance clear

The measurement, the detail, the passion to do things right and to get an independent assessment of cereal varieties shone brightly at Backweston last Friday.

The attendance at the Department Open Day in partnership with the Irish Seed Trade Association spoke volumes.

This year has been kind to cereal crops in terms of disease pressure. Clearly location on the island for these trial sites is becoming a bigger issue of late, with the increasing prevalence of yellow rust, especially on the east coast.

Multiple sites and over 20 commercial growers significantly increases cost to the Department when carrying out certification and evaluation.

Amazingly this year, 178 cereal varieties are being tested. You would wonder is the return still there to test 20 plus varieties of spring wheat and barley per year.

Positivity

In terms of the upcoming harvest, there was a sense of more positivity on spring crops among those gathered last Friday. As the winter harvest fast approaches, the yields look promising.

Back to the variety testing – the message for farmers is clear – rust resistance, if you are farming on the east coast in particular, will increasingly take on a more important role in the next number of years.

Putting all your eggs in one variety that is prone to rust could seriously undermine yields. A yield swing of 16% between varieties from best to worst also means variety selection is critical.

It might only be the first week in July but the weanling prices coming out of west Kerry certainly underpin the value of quality suckler bred weanlings.

Clearly the exporters drove the trade for the relatively small number of weanlings on offer, however, it shows the value of these stock now in other countries.

If they are being purchased for €5.50/kg and then transported for a high cost finishing period abroad, clearly the end cost to the final owner when the animals are at slaughter weight will be closer to €10/kg.

The premium of remaining bluetongue free is loud and clear.

Marts and mart managers have had a great 2024 and early 2025. Prices boomed and many farmers turned to marts to allow increased competition for stock play out around the ring.

With the destocking policies continuing, many mart managers are now clearly concerned that they simply won’t be getting the stock numbers they previously were in other years.

The fact that stock numbers in marts were back 100,000 in May clearly shows the impact already beginning to hit home of increased livestock exports and lower stock numbers on farms.

The ICBF database tells us that suckler calf registrations are back by almost 20,000 heads for calves born in 2025.

However, the higher cumulative year-to-date sale number through marts perhaps suggests stock sales were front loaded given the good weather. We’ll wait and see.

This week we learned the NPWS has purchased over 7,000 acres in the last five years mostly to increase the size of the national parks in sensitive areas.

Our letter writer from Donegal suggests much of the northwest is evolving into a national park with and without NPWS involvement. Have we reviewed how these lands are managed?

We can’t keep increasing the land area and ignore what is happening on the hills already owned by NPWS or landowners.

We also need more research and effort into how sheep and cattle can help manage large swathes of land, often in very high uplands that often are taken over by invasive species.