Dairy farmers, John and Brendan Walsh, from Co. Tipperary have been named as the overall winners of the 2024 Teagasc/FBD Environmental Sustainability Awards.
The father and son farming team were also presented with a total prize fund worth €10,000 at an awards ceremony last night (Tuesday, October 1) in Co.Laois.
The awards aimed to highlight the progress farmers are making to “lighten the load of farming on the environment, while continuing to produce high quality, nutritious food, in a profitable manner”.
The father and son overall winning team are dairy farming in Ballylooby, Co. Tipperary, and currently 65% of the farm contains clover and some paddocks have received no chemical fertiliser in the last two years.
They have also reduced their chemical Nitrogen (N) use by 48% since 2020, and 87% of the N is NBPT protected urea.
There are also trees planted every year on the Walsh farm and hedges are allowed to grow up, and out, to “maximise their value for biodiversity, but also carbon capture”.
The N surplus on the farm is 91 kilogrammes of N/ha, compared to the national average of 159 kg N/ha.
Teagasc
According to Teagasc the environmental sustainability awards recognise and celebrate the actions that individual farmers are taking to improve the “overall environmental sustainability of their farming business”.
There were nine category awards and prizes were awarded for five enterprise categories and four best of categories in dairy, beef – breeding/suckler, beef – non-breeding/finishing, sheep and tillage.
The awards had a total prize fund of €30,000, with the overall winner allocated a prize of €10,000. Each enterprise award winner also received €2,500 and each winner in the best of category received €2,500.
The enterprise winners were:
- John and Brendan Walsh (Tipperary) – dairy;
- Aidan Maguire, (Meath) – dairy beef;
- Shane Keaveney, (Roscommon) – suckler beef;
- Brian Nicholson, (Kilkenny) – sheep;
- Tom Barry, (Cork) – tillage.
The category winners were:
- Edwin Thompson, Tipperary (dairy) – Reducing greenhouse gas emissions;
- Ken Gill, Offaly (suckler beef) – enhancing biodiversity;
- Martin Crowe, Limerick (dairy) – improving water quality;
- James O’Keeffe, Meath (organic tillage) – improving soil health and carbon.
Other finalists included Alan and Cheryl Poole, Wexford (dairy), Blatnaid Gallagher, Galway (sheep),Eamon and Donnchadh McCarthy, Waterford (suckler beef), Shane Fitzgerald, Waterford (dairy) Richard Starrett, Donegal (dairy) John Murphy, Cork (dairy beef) and Michael McGuigan, Meath (suckler beef).
Professor Frank O’Mara, director of Teagasc, said the awards were a “wonderful celebration of the progress farmers have made, and are making, to improve environmental sustainability on their farms while continuing to produce high quality, nutritious food”.
“The agri-sector needs all farmers and all involved in the sector to firmly focus on improving water quality, reducing emissions, and enhancing biodiversity.
“The 16 finalists in these awards are excellent ambassadors for what is being done on family farms around the country,” he added.