Farmland, a programme that focuses on the topical issues facing Irish agriculture, will return to the Agriland platform this week on Tuesday, March 1.
It is the first episode of the programme to be broadcast since the government introduced restrictions in 2020 to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The fortnightly programme will feature in-studio interviews with the major players in Irish agriculture, as well as exploring agri-business, research, farm politics and global insights.
This week’s Farmland
As Ireland’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan awaits adjudication by the European Commission, this week’s episode of Farmland features a sit-down interview with MEP Colm Markey.
The MEP for the Midlands North West, who is a dairy farmer himself, gives the European perspective on Ireland’s slice of CAP funding.
He discusses who wins and who potentially loses out in the CAP spend and why carbon sequestration must be key to the future of on-farm environmental measures.
Recently, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, led a Bord Bia trade mission to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to develop new markets for Irish agri-food exports.
Part of the itinerary included a trip to a dairy farm based in the Dubai desert, home to 17,500 cattle, which also features on this Farmland episode and can be viewed above.
Al Rawabi set up the dairy operation in 1989 with 500 imported cows and now produces almost 400,000L of dairy products/day.
Food inflation and input costs
The issue of input costs, particularly fertiliser, is also discussed on this week’s Farmland with Agriland editor, Stella Meehan, agricultural economist, Ciarán Fitzgerald and journalist, Richard Halleron.
Ciaran explains how the lack of any real inflation in terms of food prices over the past 20 years is poor policy by the government and he explains the impact in terms of farmgate prices.
Speaking on the programme, Richard Halleron explains that farmers won’t tolerate any potential bid to reduce agricultural production in this country.
Agriland platform
Farmland will be available on the Agriland website at 7:00p.m tomorrow evening (Tuesday, March 1) and will run fortnightly on Tuesday evenings at the same time.
Links to the programme can be found on all Agriland social media or by clicking the Farmland tab on agriland.ie.