More “land is not going to be the answer for everybody” when it comes to Nitrates Derogation legislation, according to head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer at Teagasc, Dr. Joe Patton.
He was speaking on Agriland’s AgriFocus podcast as the deadline to reduce the upper limit on organic nitrogen (N) from 250kg N/ha to 220kg N/ha for Nitrates Derogation farms in designated catchment areas looms.
Derogation allows farmers to exceed the 170kg of N/ha maximum stocking rate, albeit under tighter regulations.
“There is quite a geographical bias or difference in it, so what we tend to see is that, obviously in areas where there’s an issue, we tend to have lots of farms in that area possibly that have an issue,” Joe Patton said.
“They’re possibly all chasing a similar resource around land, so land is not going to be the answer for everybody because this tends to be a very regionalised thing and in certain regions, we have big number of farmers together in an area facing the same problem, at the same time.
“The ‘easy out’, if you like, of additional land might not be as available to them as everywhere else.”
Culling cows
Patton stressed that he believes there is a sort of “sensationalism” regarding the idea of a cow cull, “that doesn’t serve anybody well at all”.
“If the situation is that the herd, or that the particular farm in question, has a situation where they’re already reliant on purchased feed; they’re already reliant on buying silage or maize, or whatever it might be on the stem; they’re already reliant already on exporting slurry, and they’re doing that in a way that’s quite low margin – in a situation like that, particularly if there is also a labour issue on the farm, those farms need to make a decision,” he said.
Patton said that Teagasc has been consistent on this advice for more than a decade, long before a reduction in Nitrates Derogation was mooted.
“Make a decision based on good numbers, and sometimes a trim in stock numbers might actually be beneficial to them.”
The Teagasc expert said the question of culling cows is as much an economic question as it is a nitrates question.
“On the other hand, we have other farms then, that that [culling] won’t be an option because they’ve already got to the situation where the farm is in balance for feed,” he continued.
“The two things are related but they’re also separate. It’s not every farm that is going to say ‘right, changing stock numbers is the solution’… particularly where farms are just moderately exceeding the 220kg limit now.
“In that case, generally speaking, it’s not going to be changing stock numbers that’s possibly going to be the solution; maybe when you’re closer to the 250kg and over, some element of a look at the stock numbers relative to land structure would be the thing,” he added.
Reduce herd numbers should be considered on a case-by-case basis and Patton said that scale and intensity should be separated from each other.
“Theoretically, it is possible for the dairy industry in Ireland to become less intensive but grow at the same time,” Patton stated.
You can listen to the discussion in full by clicking here.