Teagasc has spent all of 2021 confirming that blackgrass is now a key challenge for Irish tillage farmers.
It was an issue touched upon by cereals specialist, Ciaran Collins,during the most recent ‘Tillage Edge’ podcast.
He said: “Blackgrass did turn up in a wildflower mix sown out at Oakpark. But thanks to the vigilance of the farm manager, the issue was addressed.
“We need to be aware of the issue of blackgrass all the time. It is a zero tolerance weed. We can’t have any threshold there. And this point was highlighted strongly at the 2021 Oakpark Open Day.”
Integrated pest management on tillage farms
Collins also highlighted the significance of integrated pest management (IPM) for Irish tillage farmers.
He commented: “It is heartening to see the number of IPM methods that are available to us now or are in development. These include the use of suction towers in order to monitor aphid flight.
“We know that in time, we will be able to give farmers assurances in terms of when aphids start moving. In turn this will allow growers to decide when, and if, they need to apply an insecticide.”
Cereals
This year has seen Irish farmers produce 2.3 million tonnes of cereals from around 274,000ha of land.
“This is an exceptional level of performance,” stressed Collins. “We started with winter barley; yields were excellent.
“The overall average yield here was 9.4t/ha. All crops yielded above the five-year average.
“We had record yields for winter oats, while winter wheat crops averaged 10.8t/ha.”
According to Collins, many growers in this country have brought cereal crops through to harvest with tremendous potential.
“However, this was not realised because of the difficult harvest conditions that followed,” he explained.
“This year, thankfully, we had really good harvest weather. Some of the winter barley was harvested down at 14% moisture levels.
“Overall, it was a relatively easy harvest. The weather was kind, while straw was gathered and baled with little or no additional cost.”
But it hasn’t been a universally good news story for all Irish grain growers in 2021.
As Teagasc’s Shay Phelan pointed out, despite the generally favourable growing conditions, some growers still had fields that did not perform to expectation.
“Early in the spring barley harvest, some growers had crops that were quite disappointing. However, most growers got on with planting out catch crops, the vast majority of which are looking tremendously well at the present time,” Phelan said.