It’s hard not to conclude that 2024 was yet another a challenging year for most farming businesses in Ireland.
But it could have been a lot worse with the weather being both the good guy and the villain of the piece in equal measure.
Earlier in the year, farmers across all sectors endured one of the latest springs in living memory, which was followed by a very cool and changeable summer.
Indeed, the first week of August was one of the wettest in living memory across many parts of the country.
And then someone, somewhere turned on a meteorological switch. The weather dried up and warmed up as September approached with the result that tillage farmers enjoyed almost perfect harvest conditions.
And as the month of October beckoned and the weather remained fair, the opportunity to get winter crops planted into nigh on perfect seed beds presented itself.
As a consequence, tillage farmers had the chance to establish a full panoply of winter crops – for the first time in three years.
And it is encouraging to jot that these aforementioned crops continue to grow well, showing tremendous harvest promise for 2025.
Challenging year
Meanwhile, the good weather at the back end allowed livestock farmers to make much needed, later cuts of silage.
And, what’s more, the extended grazing season, which accompanied the good weather, has served to shorten the winter of 2024/2025 on large numbers of cattle, sheep and dairy farms around the country.
Tillage was the only sector not to enjoy this good news boost, with cereal prices remaining static right through the 2024 harvest and into the months that have followed.
And so 2025 beckons: assuming the weather holds up, the prospect for most sectors of Irish agriculture seem very positive.
Most commodity prices are set fair for the coming months while input costs seem to have levelled-off, for the most part.
The great hope for tillage farmers is the tremendous potential of the winter cereal and oilseed rape crops that were planted out last autumn.
The New Year should bring with it a new government. It will be interesting to see if the promises made by the politicians in the run up to Election 2024 will be kept, once the new Dáil gets down to business.
But the weather remains the key factor, which can play out in so many different ways during th4e months ahead. It all adds up to an interesting year in prospect.