The need to improve record-keeping and benchmarking services across the entire farming spectrum is blindingly obvious.
Running a business today is all about data generation and then having the scope to interpret this information accurately.
But here’s the question – why have we arrived at a point in time when Teagasc felt it had no option but to partner with a UK-based software company to improve record-keeping standards within the Irish tillage sector?
All of this comes across as being a very poor indictment for the ‘I.T’ support that is available for Irish agriculture as a whole.
Or is this just further evidence of the crops being regarded as a sort of ‘Cinderella’ sector within farming as a whole?
Record-keeping
But the figures clearly show, this is not the case at all. Based on a grain output of some 2.4 million tonnes in 2022, this puts the farmgate value of the grain industry here at not far off €1 billion.
This is real money and one would have thought a big enough target for home-grown software businesses to focus on.
Moreover, tillage farmers tend to be larger in scale than many of their livestock counterparts. As a consequence, they have the scale of business operation to justify dedicated software and bespoke I.T support services.
Farmplan is the company that Teagasc is now actively partnering with. One very obvious weakness in this arrangement is the fact that Brexit is now a reality.
As a consequence, farm management and crop production standards between the UK and the EU will start to diverge over the coming years.
So, I hope that we don’t see a scenario unfolding, which sees Teagasc tillage specialists having to actively advise Farmplan on the minutiae of Irish/EU crop production criteria as they start to evolve during the period ahead.
Believe me, stranger things have been known to happen.
All of this is happening as efforts are being made to highlight the tremendous potential for career advancement within the tillage sector.
Acorn Group CEO Barry Larkin spoke every eloquently on these matters at the tail end of last week.
The scope to grow Ireland’s cropping sector is immense. The government now knows this, farmers want it and consumers will benefit accordingly.
All that’s needed to make this work is some form of coordinated plan. However, I believe that the cozying-up of Teagasc to Farmplan sends out all the wrong signals in this regard.