Harvest kicked off across the country this week and tillage farmers are now trying to get crops cut at decent moisture levels.

This is when all the hard work is measured after months of management and decision making. Those crops all started with seed, and in this week’s paper we have a focus on varieties.

You can examine the up-and-coming varieties, check what seed availability there is and see what suits your system best from a straw, disease resistance and quality point of view.

ADVERTISEMENT

This year, I met with farmers and members of the seed industry as open days were held across the month of June to showcase varieties and innovation.

The scale of investment and the professionalism of the sector shone through. Farmers come out to look at the varieties in the field, see disease levels and how they stand.

They then wait for the recommended lists to come out and choose a variety that will hopefully be as sustainable as possible for their system.

In this week’s focus, Siobhán Walsh writes how 84% of winter barley seed is now barley yellow dwarf virus tolerant or resistant.

This development has been a game-changer for farmers. It has helped to protect yield as chemistry went off the market and other products became less effective.

Varieties have not yet made it through the ranks for winter wheat or spring barley, but no doubt farmers are waiting on them.

The new gene-editing regulations from the EU should help to speed up developments like this and possibly bring more helpful traits to market to help farmers deal with the challenges that they face.

Sticking with tillage, the Teagasc National Farm Survey data shows an increase in tillage incomes in 2025 but is slightly misleading.

The survey includes the livestock elements of tillage farms surveyed so no specialist tillage farms are detailed. This causes frustration for tillage farmers.

An improvement in beef prices is the main reason behind the rise in tillage incomes in 2025.

The sooner specialist tillage data becomes available the better, and more tillage farmers need to sign up to the National Farm Survey to get that data included.