Farmers slow to embrace benefits of clover

The beneficial effects of including clover in pastures have been well proved in the last few decades. Despite this, farmers are slow to accept these benefits.

In the past, fertiliser nitrogen (N) was so cheap relative to its potential for increasing pasture production that there was very little interest in getting free N from clover. Also, the feeding value of the clover plant itself was undervalued.

The big breakthrough with clover came with the trials at the Teagasc Solohead farm over a decade ago, carried out by researcher James Humphreys and colleagues. These trials indicated that with very high-level clover based pastures, it was possible to support over 2.1 cows per hectare (higher than the national average) producing almost 3,000 gallons per hectare (more than double the national average) with only 72 units of N per hectare (including silage) and moderate levels of concentrates.