It is now evident that tillage farmers who took the decision of ‘spreading risk’ across their businesses fared much better than other growers, as the ravages of the 2023 growing season just kept on coming.
This was one of the key points highlighted on a recent edition of the Tillage Edge podcast, which included contributions from Teagasc tillage specialists, Shay Phelan and Ciaran Collins.
Phelan defined the principle of ‘spreading risk’ as that of diversifying workload throughout the year. A lot of this comes back to the crop rotation agreed by farmers at the start of a growing season.
But bigger picture questions remain to be answered – one of the most obvious relating to the weather trends now impacting on Ireland.
The question, is can Irish tillage farmers expect to be dealing with years such as 2023, on a more regular basis?
And, if so, how can they best cope with such a scenario?
Weather 2023
Phelan kicked-off the discussion on the Tillage Edge podcast with a weather review of the last 12 months.
He said: “It has been a peculiar year, weather wise, for a lot of people. Storms have been a feature for most of the past 12 months.
“First-off, the autumn of 2022 was very wet, particularly the month of November. The new calendar year started off with a pretty normal January. Winter crops came into 2023 very much on the back foot. Yes, we had a pretty benign January.”
But he also highlighted that the second half of February was “quite dry”.
“”This allowed growers to catch up on work that really needed to be done. However, the months of March and April saw rainfall levels that were well above normal. This delayed the spraying of crops and the spreading of fertiliser,” he added.
According to Phelan, the beginning of May was characterised by drought-like conditions.
“This really put crops on the back foot. Many had endured a very challenging winter. Root structures may not have been as good and one might have hoped for.
“As a result, they really suffered during the drought that impacted May and early June. Thereafter, the wet weather really took hold. It really had a very significant impact on crops later in the season,” he added.
What this meant for farmers across the country was that harvest dates were delayed.
Phelan added: “We also had the challenge of winter barley straw remaining on the ground for up to six weeks and longer. So, we had a stop-start harvest right up to October, unfortunately.”
But, the bad news did not simply end there. Knock-on effects from the extended 2023 harvest and the continuing poor weather have had a dramatic impact on the 2023/2024 winter cereal planting season.
North/south divide
Meanwhile, Ciaran Collins confirmed that tillage farmers in the south of the country were disproportionately impacted by the bad weather in 2022/2023.
“The winter barley area sown out in Cork dropped by 45% in 2023, relative to the previous year.
“The comparable figure for Wexford was 41%. These figures would indicate that a lot of the heavy rain that did fall during the autumn period of 2022 was focussed on the south of the country,” he outlined.
However, according to Collins, in contrast the tail end of the 2022 harvest and the conditions for sowing winter oilseed rape were quite good.
“There was some winter barley sown in the early October period. But growers pretty much ran out of road after that. Where wheat was concerned, the same principles apply, relative to barley.
“There was a small window of opportunity that presented itself at the end of January this year. This allowed growers to get wheat into the ground at that stage,” he added.
But according to Collins all of this left winter barley taking the biggest hit.
In terms of crops coming into the spring of 2023, Collins confirmed that fields of winter barley were looking well at that stage.
He said: “This was a case of crops being sown out in reasonably good conditions and being able to withstand that the heavy weather when it arrived. Yes, bare patches were visible in some crops but not to the extent that many growers might have expected.”
February 2023 was a very dry month, with only 37% of normal rainfall levels recorded. According to Phelan tillage farmers used this opportunity in a number of different ways:
“One was to catch up on winter plantings, particularly wheat, the other was to start drilling crops like beans. There was also quite a bit of malting barley sown-out at the end of February. In reality, we were talking about a two-week window for this work to be undertaken as the beginning of the month had been very wet.”
He said that some farmers also took the opportunity of putting early nitrogen on winter barley crops towards the end of February.
“And, as it turned out, this had a very beneficial impact on the yields that were eventually recorded at harvest time,” Phelan added.
March was a wash-out
March of 2023 turned out to be one of the wettest comparable months on record and tillage farmers – who had an expectation of getting spring crops into the ground – were dealt a major blow.
He said: “March is a crucially important period of the year for farmers wanting to get spring crops drilled.
“However, there was very little planting work carried out during March 2023.
“And then there was the knock-on effect of not being able to get into winter crops on time with fertiliser.”
Meanwhile a lot of very expensive fertiliser was purchased by farmers during the spring months of 2023.
Phelan said: “Nitrogen was coming in at up to €1,000/t. We also had the scenario unfolding of farmers delaying the purchase of fertiliser, in the hope that prices might drop as the spring period unfolded.
“As a result, they missed the opportunity of spreading nitrogen during the dry slat at the end of February. This really did have a huge impact on the performance of crops thereafter.
“Yes, there was a drop in fertiliser prices later in the spring. But it came far too late for tillage farmers.”