The audience played a big part in this year’s Teagasc National Tillage Conference. Members of the crowd took part in various polls throughout the day on topics from Brexit, to the chemical toolbox and integrated pest management (IPM) strategies.

Challenges facing the sector

When asked what the biggest factor facing the sector was the response was focused on chemicals. 52% of participants in the poll outlined the loss of active ingredients as the biggest challenge facing the sector.

With this in mind, the majority of farmers were realistic about making the move to a mixed strategy approach to pest control as can be seen in the results below.

Brexit

The morning’s poll was focused mainly on Brexit and a realistic or pessimistic 77% stated that Brexit was bad for the tillage sector.

Looking to the future, tillage farmers showed their resilience with a total of 62% thinking that the tillage area would either stay the same or decrease by 1-10%.

Integrated pest management

Very positively IPM is being taken seriously by Irish tillage farmers. A very significant result was that 89% of farmers consider IPM to be an extremely important tool on tillage farms.