The director of Teagasc has said that the practice of slaughtering unwanted male dairy calves must be eliminated.
Frank O’Mara told the Agriland livestream at the National Ploughing Championships in Ratheniska, Co. Laois that the objective should be that every animal born on a farm has a use.
Between January and the end of May this year, 29,802 calves under the age of six months were slaughtered in Ireland.
O’Mara denied that Teagasc should take responsibility for the breeding advice it had previously given to dairy farmers.
“Our message has always been, yes, as a dairy farmer you obviously want to breed a cow that’s going to give you a good return in milk.
“But we’ve always said that you can do that while at the same time ensuring that calf has a value for beef production, whether it is a Friesian bull calf or a cross bred calf.
“That’s the way we have always approached it. We’ve said for many years if you are breeding Jersey cows, you should use sexed semen,” he said.
“I think it’s an issue the industry and ourselves, as one of the players in the industry, we certainly have to address and eliminate that practice.
“The dairy industry rightly puts itself as an industry that produces a high-quality product.
“I think for any industry that does that, you can’t have part of your industry which has a sub-standard or an unwanted product. It does diminish the whole brand,” O’Mara continued.
“Dairy farmers are very conscious of that; the potential to damage the brand of the industry as a whole. This is an issue that has to be sorted,” he added.
O’Mara said that Teagasc encourages dairy farmers to use the Dairy Beef Index to produce good quality beef calves and promotes a high standard of calf rearing through Animal Health Ireland (AHI).
Emissions
Meanwhile, the Teagasc director believes that the 25% emissions reduction target for the agriculture sector is achievable, but it will be challenging.
“I think it is but it is going to require a lot of investment in research to come up with technologies to allow us to do that and then a lot of support for farmers to help them adopt those technologies.”
O’Mara added that the industry has a role to play in incentivising farmers to adopt such technologies, citing sustainability schemes rolled out by some processors.
He said that there has been an “encouraging uptake” by farmers in emissions-reducing technologies such as protected urea and low emission slurry spreading (LESS).
He stated that the aim “as a food producing country” is to avoid a reduction in the national herd.
Teagasc is planning to rollout a digital platform next year which will allow farmers to assess carbon emissions and sequestration on their farms.
“It will be very much early stage, an estimate. The other thing I would say is farmers are not individually accountable for their emissions at this stage, it’s an industry wide target.
“I think we will find that a lot of them [farms] are a long way towards climate neutrality when we start to put the figures together.
“The science is very active in that area so the figures that we will currently use to estimate that sequestration, they will become more accurate as the years go by.”
O’Mara also encouraged farmers to considering buying fertiliser now.
“All the indications are that fertiliser will be expensive next spring and also there could be issues around supply of it.
“All of the factors that existed to drive up prices this year still very much exist and that’s a big challenge for farmers, it makes farming riskier.
“We’d be saying to farmers fertiliser is very dear now but it’s a critical input into your system next spring for a livestock farmer or for a tillage farmer.
“It’s very risky to leave all of the purchase of that until next spring. So if you are in a position to buy some now, it’s probably the wise thing to do,” O’Mara said.