A new €3.2m Strategic Development Plan has recently been launched for Mountbellew Agricultural College in Co. Galway.

Currently the college has just over 900 students enrolled in a number of degree programmes, as well as a mixture of part-time and online courses, Principal of the College, Tom Burke, said.

The plan, which was developed by Brendan Allen of Food 360 and was supported financially by Teagasc, was recently unveiled by the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan.

Four main strategic themes were highlighted in the plan which the college should focus its future development on in order to maintain and grow student numbers, Burke said.

The four main strategic themes include:
  • Excellence in agricultural education.
  • SMART Agriculture.
  • Experiential education programmes.
  • Out-reach and community development.

“Excellence in agricultural education is what we have been doing for many years here in Mountbellew, but with rapid advances in industry we need to adapt quickly in education to keep pace,” Burke said.

It is hoped with the help of the plan, new degree courses in the areas of Agricultural Engineering, Horticulture and Forestry and further education courses could be provided in Mountbellew.

Mountbellew Agricultural College

Mountbellew Agricultural College

The €3.2m would be spent on improving the college’s facilities and farms as well as providing additional staff resources as part of the Strategic Development Plan.

A number of avenues will be explored over the coming months in order to secure the necessary funding to put the plan in place, he said.

Details of Mountbellew Agricultural College

The college runs a number of farm enterprises, including both a dairy and suckler herd as well as a flock of sheep, he added.

At the moment we’re farming close to 200ha. We run a dairy herd of about 90 Holstein cows and a 50-cow suckler herd, which are mostly Limousins.

“In the future we hope to have half of our dairy herd made up of cross-bred cows, in order to compare stats between them and the Holstein cows.

“With the help of the funding, we will be looking to improve the technology in our dairy parlour. We would be planning to spend over €300,000 on our dairy facilities in the long term.

“We also have a flock of close to 200 ewes. In the past we used to carry out a lot of tillage work, but we have scaled back over the last number of years due to the difficult conditions,” he said.