Farmers raised covers over the use of homegrown rations in dairy herds at a recent Teagasc event at Johnstown Castle, particularly around costs and government policy.
The opinions were shared in response to Teagasc results from research looking at ways that imported protein sources such as soya could be replaced by homegrown rations.
Imported feed makes up a large amount of rations used in dairy and beef systems, which raises questions over sustainability and the environmental impact.
Homegrown rations
The research, which was conducted at Johnstown Castle, looked at replacing the imported feed within the diet of the dairy herd there.
The trial was completed on a portion of the herd, while the remainder of the herd was fed using a conventional ration.
Imported feed such as soya bean meal, maize distillers, and maize silage was removed from the diet.
These imported feeds were replaced with homegrown field beans and native barley.
The results of this research showed a reduction in herd performance of 200kg of milk/cow and a reduction in milk solids of 25kg.
The homegrown diet reduction in production was seen during the 15-week housed period.
Michael Dineen, a researcher from Teagasc, confirmed that the inclusion of field beans resulted in reduced performance.
He said that the challenge over the next few years is to find ways to keep field beans in the diet without losing performance.
The research is now going to look at rumen-protected amino acids and feed processing technologies by heat-treating the beans to improve their nutritional value.
Dineen said there is also the potential to look at other high-protein ingredients, such as peas and lupins.
This would be while also looking at other forages such as red clover silage to determine how that would impact on this scenario.
Concerns
Although using homegrown products is a positive for the Irish tillage sector and for emissions from agriculture, concerns around costs and government policy were raised.
The loss of production and the availability of these feeds was raised by the crowd, with some concerned by possible government policy changes.
The biggest concern among the farmers present was that government policy would make the inclusion of homegrown protein sources mandatory in rations.
With these crops not being grown in large quantities this would result in increased prices for rations and make competition for land even greater between tillage and dairy farmers.
Dineen noted that although these concerns are important, it is also important to have research on these protein sources if government policy was to change.
It was also noted that this research went to the extreme of removing imported proteins sources completely and there is likely to be a happy medium to be found using homegrown and imported proteins sources.