The country’s agricultural contractors have been hailed as the heartbeat of rural Ireland – crucial players in a food-producing sector that is vital to the national economy.
Noted for their resilience in coping with the pressures of farming and the vagaries of the weather during the busy six-month season from April to September each year, the public is now about to be given an insight into their busy world.
Contractors, an upcoming series on TG4, will focus on seven families from Donegal, Tipperary, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Galway and Meath, and the challenges they face both on and off the job.
Alastair Doherty from Ramelton in Donegal runs Bobby Doherty Agri, a company started by his father over 40 years ago. They have 130 dairy cows and supply milk to Aurivo-Co-Op.
When the milking is done, he and the crew are out and about spreading slurry, ploughing, reseeding, round baling, and cleaning septic tanks. They have eight Massey Fergusons at their disposal.
His usual schedule is to get up at 6 o’clock, get the milking done and the cows out and be on the road by 8 o’clock.
Like most contractors, it was business as usual for Alastair during the recent restrictions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.
If anything, the lockdown made life easier for them because the roads were much quieter, and they didn’t have any traffic to deal with.
But sometimes the role of an agricultural contractor goes beyond the norm as happened with Alastair two years ago when he sent some of the company’s slurry plant to areas in west Donegal to help put out raging wildfires.
Thomas Moloney, who runs Moloney Agri and Tree Care in Clogheen, Co. Tipperary, with his father Jim, is also involved in silage work.
It embraces mowing, tedding, raking and baling hay and straw, using round and square bales as well as slurry spreading with low emission trailing shoes.
Digger and dump trailer work is also a service they provide as well as tree surgery carried out by certified operators. They are award-winning contractors.
Eoin Ó Muircheartaigh from An Fheothanach in west Kerry, runs a beef and sheep farm. He also carries out baled silage, slurry spreading with trailing shoe, a small bit of ploughing and reseeding grassland.
From modest beginnings with just one tractor and a baler he has now upsized to employing up to four people in the busy summer months.
Karen O’Donoghue of O’Donoghue Agri in Banogue, Croom, Co. Limerick, is the only woman featured in the series. She has been working with her father’s contracting business since she was 16.
It does all kinds of work such as precision chop silage, round and square baling, raking, tedding, slurry spreading, dumper hire, wrapping and stacking bales, ploughing and tillage work.
“When we get the call, we go for it. There is nothing like it,” she said.
A secondary school teacher, Eoin Collins is part of Collins Agri in Kilfenora, Co Clare, a business his father started in 1994. Alongside his father and three brothers, they specialise in silage, baling, tillage and slurry.
Peadar Seoighe, Highland Ground Services in Corr na Móna, Co. Galway, is a sheep shearer, who has been in the contracting business for about six years.
From lime spreading to topping and spraying rushes, he has built an agri-business based upon the size of enterprise in the hills of Corr na Móna. His competent sheepdog, Lindsey, helps him get the job done.
The Farrelly brothers, Peter and Pat, from Kells in Meath have been in agricultural contracting for over 40 years. From pit silage to ploughing, sowing seeds to site clearances, they employ around 20 people.
Contractors, the TG4 series, will air as a growing public debate takes place about the challenges facing the industry.
The range from soaring costs and labour shortages to difficulties in securing machine parts following Brexit and planning for more precision farming.
Machines and implements with satellite guidance, computer monitoring systems and mass-produced driverless tractors with electronic sessors are now envisaged for an even more high-tech future.
A delegation from the 1,000-member Association of Farm and Forestry Contractors recently told a Joint Oireachtas Committee that agriculture can’t survive without the role of contractors.
Chief Executive Michael Moroney, accompanied by John Hughes, national chairman and Richard White, national secretary, said contractors provide the bulk of mechanisation services to the Irish farming and account for a sector turnover of over €700m.
He said there is a frightening prospect that diesel could increase to €1.50 per litre if there are issues at an international level “over which we have no control.” In that scenario, it would not be sustainable to run a contracting business and provide a service for farmers.
Farm incomes will not justify dealing with the realistic charges that will need to be put in place if the price of diesel goes to those levels, he said.
Those and other issues are expected to arise over the seven episodes of Contractors, which starts on TG4 at 9:30pm next Thursday, February 24.
