The theme of this year’s Teagasc National Beef Conference, which took place yesterday (Tuesday, December 13) in the Shearwater Hotel in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, was ‘Profitable Pathways to Sustainable Beef Farming’.
The opening address at the event was delivered by Teagasc director Prof. Frank O’Mara, who said: “Irish beef farmers have consistently shown they can adapt to the many new challenges and opportunities that they have had to face over the years.
“The last 12 months have been particularly challenging, with significant increases in input prices. Rising fertiliser, concentrate and energy costs to a level never seen before, have put beef margins under significant pressure.
“The focus now on many farms will be to examine where inputs can be reduced, while still maintaining output.”
Prof. O’Mara said that Teagasc is supporting farmers to play their part in reducing emissions and increasing carbon sequestration.
“We have launched a number of important new initiatives, as part of the Teagasc Climate Action strategy,” he said.
“We will be advancing the development of our new Sustainability Digital Platform that will aid farmers in getting a better understanding of the sources of emissions, and how through the implementation of proven technologies, they can reduce emissions.
“Teagasc has also launched a new Virtual National Centre for Agri-Food Climate Research and Innovation.”
Pearse Kelly, head of the Teagasc Drystock Knowledge Transfer Department, shared O’Mara’s sentiment.
“It has been a difficult year for beef farmers in relation to both rising input costs and beef price and there are ongoing concerns around sustained high input prices in 2023,” he said.
“This conference focused on increasing sustainability on beef farms in the longer term. We also focused on the challenges facing farmers in the coming year, particularly with rising input costs.”
Sustainability on beef farms
Dr. Paul Crosson, beef enterprise leader at Teagasc Grange, addressed the first session of the conference, which was titled ‘Key enablers to improving sustainability on beef farms’.
He assessed the potential to improve technical performance and profitability for beef cattle production.
Dr. Natascha Meunier from Animal Health Ireland and programme manager for Beef HealthCheck, outlined how to improve animal health to increase liveweight performance.
Dr. Colin Byrne, researcher with Teagasc Grange, then discussed how to reduce the age at first calving for suckler cows, which is a key profit driver.
Shane Keaveny, a farmer from Co. Roscommon, outlined how he calves his heifers at 24-months of age and how he achieves target weight for age and gets his heifers in-calf to calve at 24 months.
Keaveny operates a suckler beef system where the male calves are finished as under-16-month bull beef.
Red clover
Red clover has a role in beef production systems. Researchers from Teagasc Grange Dr. Nicky Byrne and Peter Doyle outlined their latest findings on this topic.
One farmer who has started on this journey this year is Martin Connolly, a farmer from Co. Roscommon, who is participating in the Teagasc Dairy Beef 500 programme.
At the event, Martin discussed how he has incorporated red clover on his farm and his experience with it to date.
From researching red clover swards, Martin was impressed with its enhanced ability over grass-only swards to maintain high levels of production and animal performance from significantly lower levels of chemical nitrogen fertiliser.
Second session on the night
In the conference’s second session, titled ‘Delivering sustainability at farm level’, a panel discussed the current and future policy surrounding sustainability at farm level.
Contributions were made by Teagasc researchers Dr. Sinead Waters and Dr. Dominika Krol, Ross Evans from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), Pearse Kelly, and other industry experts.
A document from the event is available to view on the Teagasc website.