Can’t depend on good luck (or weather) for winter feed===
Two serious fodder crises in six years leave question marks over how dairy and beef farming are managed.
These questions need to be answered fast, not least because longer-term effects of the current crisis make replenishment of fodder storage on farms challenging.
Many grazing fields have been damaged by grazing in wet conditions; that damage will reduce grass output for the year from these fields.
Last year’s grain harvest difficulties were a contributory factor to the fodder crisis, because an estimated 10% of straw was left unbaled in the autumn, and much of the straw baled was of poor feed quality due to bad weather.
At this early stage, there are already indicators that straw for cattle feeding may be a scarce commodity again next winter. Already, bad weather has disrupted cereal crop planting last autumn and this spring, and interfered with spring management of autumn-sown crops.
Autumn plantings are estimated by Teagasc to be down by 10.2%, and little progress had been made with spring planting up to this week.
With necessary treatment of growing crops also delayed by recent bad weather, and the sowing date having passed for full yield potential wheat crops, a below average contribution of straw to next winter’s feeding can again be anticipated.
On the plus side, where it is too late to grow such cereal crops, growing fodder crops instead for sale to livestock farmers can be considered, in the hope of a strong demand in the autumn because there are no stocks of fodder left to carry over.
Even that option shows one of the farming policy gaps which can contribute to fodder shortage; the lack of an effective farmer-to-farmer fodder trading framework that buyer and seller can have full confidence in, without fear of bad debts.
That may be easy to fix, if co-ops offer to buy surplus winter fodder from farmers, and offer it for sale onto buyers, next autumn or winter.
This is what co-ops such as Lakeland Dairies did recently, when the crisis escalated. It should become a permanent fixture, with a third party like the co-op enabling much smoother farmer-to-farmer trading.
Ideas like that are needed so that farmers shouldn’t have to depend on good luck or good weather to escape another fodder crisis in 12 months’ time. An investigation of why feed ran out in 2013 and again in 2017 is needed, so that farmers can best be advised, and farming policy changed if necessary, to avoid repeat fodder shortages.
Some might possibly say we already import 3.47m tonnes of concentrate animal feeds every year, so why not import the roughage animal feeds also? But that policy would remove Ireland’s competitive advantage in growing grass, and make a mockery of our reputation for grass-fed beef and dairy production, and for good animal welfare.
In any case, after two brushes with disaster in six years, the farming industry badly needs guidance on how to avoid a third repeat that could frighten even more farmers and future farmers out of an industry which is already short of labour resources.
Young people who have been through the trauma of fodder shortage in recent months on the worst affected farms are unlikely to sign up for full-time farming careers, unless the spectre of future fodder shortages is banished.
Surely it is not too big a challenge to the farming industry to ensure enough winter fodder is stored for our livestock?
Could the failure to do that in 2013 and 2018 indicate that the advice to provide fodder for four and a half months and 25% plus for insurance (in Munster) is being ignored?
Is it possible that Teagasc has not emphasised that requirement enough?
Or maybe the emphasis by Teagasc advisors on extended grazing has led farmers to take their eyes off provision of winter fodder?
It is noticeable that much of the emphasis at the recent Ballyhaise Agricultural College open day in Co Cavan was on starting the first rotation in mid-February.
That grazing isn’t much use if the fields are saturated in mid-February.
