Darren Allen: Growing quality crops is only half the battle for tillage farmers
Darren Allen, tillage farmer sifting through the rock soil where radishes have been planted on his farm in Ballymaloe near Shanagarry in Cork to absorb and store the nitrogen left over from the summer crops. Picture: Chani Anderson
Crops are looking well, with good yield potential despite the cold summer we are getting. However, we will need a rise in grain prices to cover our costs.
As a tillage farmer, it is upsetting AgNav has highlighted the low-carbon grains grown in Ireland, yet they are not being utilised by everyone in the feed industry, some of whom have favoured cheaper imports, resulting in a big carryover of Irish grain.
This is despite the fact imported grain may contain GMOs and chemicals banned in Europe for good reason.
On the winter wheat front, the head is out and the crop is looking clean. We put out a lot of sulphur with the fertiliser, so the straw is good and stiff. The crop received two fungicides, the T1 and T2, and it is holding its colour well.
All three establishment methods — direct drill, min-till and plough-one-pass — are looking good, so it will be interesting to see if the savings on cultivation will reward us at harvest. The crop received 3,000gal/acre of pig slurry, Terra CAN and some foliar urea with added carbon.
The head is out in the earlier-planted spring barley and it is awaiting its T2. We have a field where no fungicide has been applied. I am experimenting with using biological controls after some successful small-scale trials last year.
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It may be a bit brave, as there seems to be more fungal disease pressure this year, but so far it is looking clean. We have both plough-one-pass and min-till spring barley, and both are looking well. The later-planted spring barley is trying to catch up.
The flowers are well out on the beans and are starting to appear on the peas. We planted with a strip-till this year and increased the seed rate based on the thousand grain weight (TGW), as we felt it was a bit thin last year. We had a much better strike rate in the drier field compared to the peas in a wetter field. Crops are looking very clean, with no fungicide applied to date. The crop received pig slurry pre-planting.
I have been selected to be a host farm for a new European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project called Arable Coast Environment (ACE). Actions we are undertaking as part of this project include bird cover, arable margins, beetle banks and skylark plots.
This will add another layer of biodiversity and environmental benefits to my farm on top of those we are delivering through the NPWS Farm Plan, ACRES and EIP Farming for Water.
It was great to welcome a group of delegates from Nuffield Ireland to the farm at the end of May as part of their triennial tour. We are also looking forward to the Farming for Nature Festival. They have teamed up with the National Organic Training and BASE Ireland, and have some great speakers lined up who will be asking interesting questions.
- Darren Allen is a Signpost tillage farmer based at Ballymaloe Farm, Ballymaloe, Shanagarry, Co Cork. His Teagasc Tillage adviser is Laura Whelan, and his Teagasc Signpost adviser is John Mahon.
