This week, Irish Farmers Journal dairy editor Jack Kennedy was in Brussels when the Council of EU agriculture ministers met to address the crisis in farmgate prices. He met the minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, and asked him for his views on the measures decided on Monday.

Meanwhile, Belgian farmers were protesting outside the building. Despite the disruption to the streets blocked by tractors, a Brussels woman told our reporter Amy Fitzgibbon that she supported the farmers.

Some of the measures agreed on Monday aim to support exports. One example of recent efforts to access new markets is the opening of a factory in Saudi Arabia by Al Wazeen, a subsidiary of Ornua that makes local cheese from Irish milk powder. The Irish Farmers Journal’s agribusiness editor, Eoin Lowry, was there.

New export markets are a hot topic for the beef industry, too. The chief executive of Dawn Meats, Niall Browne, was at the UCD ag debate last week and Anthony Jordan spoke with him about progress in the US and China as well as weight limits for cattle here.

Trade with the US is fraught with a lot of hard questions: what will happen with the proposed TTIP trade agreement? What about genetically modified food and hormone-fed beef? For an American view on these questions, Irish Farmers Journal news correspondent Odile Evans met Ed Kee, the agricultural secretary of the US state of Delaware.

With pig farmers facing a price crisis, Odile Evans met Dutch pig farmer Ruben Van Boekl and asked him about the situation in his country. A Nuffield scholar, Van Boekl is studying ways of adding value on farm in the pig sector.

A series of articles on locally-led agri-environmental schemes begins this week in the Irish Farmers Journal. They provide funding for groups of farmers to organise and protect natural habitats, and the Burren has pioneered the system. Odile Evans spoke with Sharon Parr, a scientist working on the project.

Margaret Hawkins wrote an article in this week’s Irish Country Living after visiting the WW1 battlefields in France and Belgium. Dermot Curran works as a guide on the historic sites and he told her how the fighting of 100 years ago still affects the work of farmers today.

The Rose of Tralee, Elysha Brennan, is on the cover of Irish Country Living this week. She has a word of advice for anyone interested in taking part in the festival, in conversation with features editor Maria Moynihan.

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Missed the previous episodes of the podcast? Catch up here: www.farmersjournal.ie/podcast