Tullamore Farm manager Shaun Diver’s report from his visit to a sheep farm in France highlights a number of things.

The first is price – at nearly €10/kg for lamb, the French price is €2/kg ahead of current Irish price. Yes, fat lambs are making over €180 per head this week in the marts, but the French price shows there is still some headroom. The second is how they are adapting their system to stay competitive.

They target expensive meal at young growing lambs for a short period and grow high protein crops with little inputs on land that traditionally dries out in the summer.

Farmers glad to finish winter planting

I was in Waterford on Tuesday with a tillage farmer, delighted to be finishing sowing his winter oats. Reading Conor Kehoe’s Tramlines report, it seems many tillage farmers are in the fortunate position to have a winter crop emerging and nearly all sowing complete. While it has been stop start with the weather for the last two weeks, the investment in machinery to get the seed sown in a timely fashion is phenomenal.

The challenges and opportunities plus the policy changes needed for sector growth will be discussed in detail at our Tillage Day on 7 November at the Killashee Hotel, Naas – contact ifj.ie/tillageday or call 01 4199525 to book in.