This week’s episode of Farmland, which will be broadcast tomorrow (Tuesday, August 2) will take a special focus on Harvest 2022 and features an in depth discussion on how the Irish tillage sector is looking.
In the programme, which will go live at 7:00p.m tomorrow, chairman of the Irish Grain Growers’ Group (IGGG) Bobby Miller and agronomist Richard Halleron join Agriland’s editor Stella Meehan in studio.
They take a look at how this year’s harvest is progressing and what factors have been affecting this including the weather, diseases such as Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus and the rising cost of inputs.
Halleron discusses the main diseases that played a role in dropping harvests this year, with the most severe one being BYDV. He and Miller discuss the prospects around managing this going forward as regulations tighten on the use of various pesticides.
Miller outlines that in the run up to the new season, tillage farmers are becoming increasingly concerned, as they face prices of between €800 to €1,000t for fertiliser while the markets remain unstable.
Both Halleron and Miller discuss the options for tillage farmers to manage these risks, such as forward selling grain and taking out crop insurance.
Tillage emissions
Later in the programme, Miller speaks about the tillage sector and its emissions production. He outlines that it is not far from carbon neutral and says he believes there must be more investment into it as part of the emissions reduction solution.
His comments come given the ongoing reaction to the government’s announcement last week that the sectoral emissions ceiling for agriculture will be 25%.
Speaking about emissions reduction, Miller reiterates that increasing the tillage area and investing meaningfully in the sector could play a big part in achieving this cut.
The episode and podcast of Farmland will go live tomorrow on the Agriland platform. All episodes can be streamed via the award-winning digital platform, agriland.ie, and links will also be available across Agriland social media platforms.
All episodes of Farmland can be viewed by clicking here.