In a recent interview with Agriland, John Hughes, chairman of Farm Contractors Ireland (FCI) laid out his concerns for the future of farm contracting in Ireland.
His number one concern was the shortage of skilled staff available to get the work done in a timely manner; it is a difficulty faced by his own contracting company, Hughes Brothers Agri Contracting of Kilkenny.
Experience counts
Hughes Brothers offers a wide range of tillage services in the local area and has been doing so since their father, Kevin Hughes, started off in the 1940s thinning out beet rows.
The business has changed a great deal in the intervening years and although the staff numbers now stand at four regulars, including John and his brother Brendan, the amount of work undertaken is magnitudes greater.
This spring has seen 1,800ac sown already, with another couple of hundred yet to go. When Agriland visited, the Lemken drill was out sowing barley on ploughed ground which was being prepared by a Vaderstad Carrier 500s cultivator.
It is a tightly-run operation, with an experienced team running it. The ability to get so much work done is due, in the main, to investing in new machines which can cover ground at a faster pace.
Timeliness is priority for Hughes team
In the past, the company has undertaken other types of work, giving John a good grasp of the contracting scene. The brothers were, not so long ago, deeply involved in the straw business, and they still supply a mushroom company, although not to as great an extent.
Tillage is now the main area of operation and for this season a Horsch Focus 3TD twin hopper drill was purchased to give greater flexibility and enable them to offer direct drilling and min till services.
These methods are no longer the Cinderella of the tillage world Brendan explained. “Farmers are wanting to reduce their input costs and the amount of passes over fields and so are turning to minimum soil disturbance in a big way.”
The service was already being provided with a Claydon drill, which is being retained as a back-up, the Horsch however, will give them greater capacity and it is felt, is more suitable for a wider range of conditions.
The quiet engineer
Yet, like all machines, adaptions can be made to make it better suited to particular operations and minor adjustments are already in place to ease the flow of seeds and fertiliser granules.
John is something of a dab hand at these alterations and numerous examples of his prowess with a welder are to be found around the premises.
One of the most impressive is a spreader for small seeds he built from scratch. It is a solid piece of engineering and the secret to all such projects he maintains, is having a good drawing of what you want to create.
Other homemade items include frames for storing front-end weights, extra twine storage on big square balers, the conversion of said balers to ball and spoon couplings.
In demand
John does have his own farm but this is only a small acreage and is by no means considered a viable standalone enterprise. The brothers’ business is farm contracting and the work keeps rolling in.
This season they will be running two new Claas Trion combines, one for their own use and one on behalf of Glanbia and its organic oat-growing programme, which is a new venture for the firm.
In the meantime there is still the drilling to finish and the spraying to be done on customers’ farms with no time to wonder where the next job is going to come from.
Good work sells itself according to John, and on time is better than cheap, two maxims which have kept the business busy and will continue to do so.