Heavy rains pose serious threat to €400m harvest

THE continuing wet weather is posing a serious threat to the €400 million grain harvest.

Farmers warned that this week will be critical for the main harvest of 250,000 hectares of winter wheat and spring barley.

Ground conditions, which are drenched and waterlogged in many areas, are hampering efforts by growers to cut the crops. Heavy machinery can’t traverse saturated fields without causing serious damage, which will have an impact on next year’s harvest.

Some crops have already been wiped out by the continuous downpours.

The prospect of harvest crops being lost or seriously damaged would be a huge blow to the country’s 15,000 tillage farmers under pressure from rising input costs and falling returns.

Irish Farmers’ Association grain committee chairman Colum McDonnell said the winter crops of barley, oats and oilseed rape would normally be harvested by now.

“The recent heavy rainfall and the deteriorating ground conditions have stalled the harvest, and in some areas, it has turned to a salvage situation,” he said.

Mr McDonnell said harvesting of the main crop of two million tonnes of grain generally begins in mid-August, but the extreme wet weather has held it back.

“Unless we see a rapid and improved turnaround in weather conditions in the next week, growers are looking at severe yield losses due to high moistures, straw and crop breakdown and difficult ground conditions.”

Meanwhile, the IFA Connacht vice president Michael Silke said rising water levels and floods are causing devastation to rural Ireland.

He said the Government’s paralysed response was deplorable. Everyone was prepared to watch houses, livestock and wildlife be decimated and blame it all on climate change.

Mr Silke said the state needs to urgently introduce a flood management plan, to include the environmental management of rivers and streams, which have been neglected for years.