There was much talk about new fungicides that might be coming to the Irish market at this week’s Teagasc Septoria Conference in Co. Meath.

But the fundamental message coming out of the event was two-fold. First up, we already have a fundamental septoria resistance problem in this country and, secondly, the fungicides that are already available must be used to optimal effect.

I am not aware of Teagasc having ever hosted a conference on such a specific issue before. So, the scale of the septoria problem facing Irish cereal growers must be immense. One of the speakers compared it to the challenge facing the livestock industry, where growing resistance to antibiotics is concerned.

My understanding is that the Teagasc hierarchy is developing a best practice spraying programme for the current season. This will be disseminated to advisers in pretty short order. On the back of this development, the advice for growers is pretty self-evident.

But it was also obvious from the range of presentations given that the conveyor belt of new fungicides that have helped to boost cereal crop performance levels over recent years is about to slow down dramatically. Who or what is applying the brakes? The short answer is the EU Commission’s new pesticide registration procedures.

Seemingly, it cost around €80m to have a new fungicide registered back in 1997. The comparable figure today is €265m.

As a result, there is no magic bullet coming down the track that can be brought to bear in the fight against septoria resistance. This leaves growers with no options other than that of going back to first principles and working with nature; not against it.

This means that the days of growing continuous wheat in Ireland may be over. And, at a more general level, there is no doubt that tillage farmers will have to get really serious, once again, about adopting rotations that help reduce overall disease burdens within their crops.

I know that many cereal growers have a problem with the current ‘three-crop rule’, which is at the centre of the CAP greening requirements. But, given the current septoria debacle, it has turned out that Brussels was right all along. Perhaps what we really need is a four or five-crop rule!