Andrew O’Carroll is a suckler farmer from north Kilkenny and in 2005 decided that some of his land was more suitable to forestry than cattle.

He told RTÉ’s Countrywide on Saturday morning that he was 100% suckler farming before he got into forestry and that like any business, you can have your eggs in a couple of baskets.

“We were suckler farming here, completely suckler farming ... and the block we’re on here is 30ac and it is marginal ground.

“As anyone with marginal ground knows, in the spring time you can have late turnout and if the fall comes bad you can have an early winter, so the grazing season could be very short some years and it wasn’t very economical with marginal ground on the edge of the Castlecomer plateau.

With the returns from beef farming, suckler farming at the moment, I’d say there’s a lot of people thinking of planting a portion of their farm

“I took over this farm in 1996; a relation was very good to me. He had farmed this ground before me with his cousin. I had some ground taken on an 11-month system and I brought them to see that one day and they were saying that if I could get more of it or get it on a long-term lease I should plant it, that it was nothing but hardship.

“They had farmed it for years and thought that the forestry grants were good and the premiums. It was their idea, I wouldn’t have thought of planting it because I was delighted to get the farm and try and make the best that I could out of it. But when we thought about it and looked at the returns from it, it seemed like a sensible decision to make. It has a place in everyone’s enterprise, if they have marginal ground, and it’s an option to look at,” he said.

Bugbear

O’Carroll said that the obligation by law to replant the land after it is clear-felled is a bugbear of his, saying that “once you plant it’s gone for generations to come”.

“You’re making a decision for other generations to come, which no other enterprise is forced to do, so that’s a psychological barrier and it always has been to people planting some of their ground,” he said.

O’Carroll said that forestry isn’t for everybody, but he always wants to be classed as a suckler farmer who also has a forest enterprise.

“Like any business, you can have your eggs in a couple of baskets and it suits me. People with marginal land, with the returns from beef farming, suckler farming at the moment, I’d say there’s a lot of people thinking of planting a portion of their farm if it suits them.

“There might be a big barrier, a lot of bad publicity about Sitka spruce, but there’s different options. You can go broadleaf, diverse, continuous forest … you don’t want the country taken over by Sitka spruce but there’s a place for it.

“It has to be a benefit having the carbon sink and the biodiversity like the farmyard is right beside this particular plantation and up to about two years ago I never knew what a pine marten was but I do now, because I’ve seen one coming out of a shed where I was storing straw, coming back out into the plantation and seemingly the grey squirrel is part of their food.

“So they’re helping to bring back the red squirrel. It’s helping in the ecosystem from that point of view. It contributes as far as we’re concerned as helping because everything in balance. There’s cattle grazing in the field beside it, there’s a farmyard there – it’s everything in proper balance,” he said.

A civil right being taken away

Also speaking on Countrywide was retired dairy farmer Seán O’Loughlin from Aughavas in Co Leitrim.

“This is the worst case scenario of afforestation. It is planted on both sides of a lane here in Clonsaran as we drive through it. There is no way of stopping it but it’s completely wrong that we have to drive through a tunnel of Sika spruce to drive to somebody’s house.

“It’s a civil right nearly taken away by what afforestation has done here,” he said.

O’Loughlin said he has no issue with trees in general, but his problem is totally with Sitka spruce.

“We would have no Sitka spruce without the premium that is given to these people who plant these forests. It really makes me feel angry that this could be put on our landscape. Anything that is clear-felled I want it replaced with native woodland.

“All farmers should plant a percentage of their land and take that premium away from Sitka spruce and give it to farmers to plant with native woodland,” he said.

Using money from the community, O’Loughlin is now mapping who owns the Sitka spruce forests in Aughavas today.

“There are Norwegian and Danish funds buying land, investment companies, about four in Aughavas and just regular people from all over the country who have money to spend,” he said.

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