Ferim Factor contestants have their eye on €40,000 prize

SINCE mid-January 12 farmers have vied to win a new Land Rover valued at over €40,000, competing in tasks such as livestock handling and selling, general knowledge, machinery skills and tests of their business acumen.

Their successes and failures have been entertaining us on Feirm Factor every Sunday evening on TG4.

Next Sunday, only three are left standing when Charleville Castle at Tullamore, Co Offaly welcomes the Feirm Factor team led by competition judges Maura Derrane, Alan Dukes, and Seán Ó Lionáird, and remaining competitors Joanne Hanrahan from Co Cork; Barry Drea from Carlow; and Gavin Satchwell from Co Kildare. They bid to follow in the footsteps of 2009 winner Tom MacGillycuddy, Co Kerry, and 2010 winner Caroline O’Neill, Co Cork.

Look out for some of the Feirm Factor competitors next Saturday night also, on Brendan O’Connor’s The Saturday Night Show on RTÉ One.

It’s all go for Good Company Productions, the team behind Feirm Factor, who have sold the format to S4C in Wales, where the third series of ‘Fferm Factor’ is in pre-production.

“I doubt that anyone expected a farming reality series to be as successful as it has been, selling abroad etc, but it has, and this is perhaps an angle in itself,” said Feirm Factor co-producer Brian Talbot, of Good Company Productions. The series was nominated for an IFTA award in 2010. He has also kicked off the search for 12 farmers for the next series, which will be filmed this summer. “I’d really like to put it to them as a challenge, because we get so many farmers saying that it all looks so easy but the reality is very different,” said Brian.

Are you aged 18 plus, and prepared to show-case the best of Irish farming today. Do you think you could be crowned Ireland’s finest farmer? If so, submit the application form at www.feirmfactor.ie before 5pm, Monday, April 25’.

The “cupla focal” would be a bonus, but fluency in Irish is not essential.