“There is huge potential now for careers in agricultural extension,” said Teagasc director Gerry Boyle at the Driving Farm Innovation through Knowledge Transfer Conference in University College Dublin on Friday. He said one of the biggest challenges facing Irish agriculture is to grow the sector sustainably.

“We have to target the extension service to the customer and adapt how we transfer knowledge to ensure uptake of new technology, especially among the hard-to-reach farmers,” stressed Boyle.

The keynote speaker at the conference, Teagasc adviser Christy Watson, encouraged the audience to constantly upskill.

“We are not postmen, we simply don’t just deliver a pre-printed message – we have to be able to give in-depth knowledge to help farmers increase efficiency and, in turn, income,” he explained.

Technology transfer

In the 1970s technology transfer in farm advisory was all one-to-one with the farmer. Now it is much more dynamic, with discussion groups, farm walks and conferences making up a big percentage of a farmer’s learning, said Christy.

There is a big challenge now for advisers to demonstrate to drystock farmers the benefits of up taking new technologies. Christy said that on dairy farms a positive change to management can be seen in a number of days, whereas in a beef system it might take nine or 10 months.

He believes good advisers have to challenge misconceptions constantly and be able to put science into practice. He gave the example of a farmer who took his advice to simply install a paddock system. Doing this helped the farmer increase his stocking rate by 64% and his gross margin by 55%.

“There is huge satisfaction in seeing advice being taken up,” Christy said.

Challenge

In the first session of the conference, an example was given of the challenge facing advisers in the area of grass measuring.

Paul Newman, a UCD and Teagasc masters student, said a study he carried out on a group of 50 dairy farmers showed that 90% were aware of grassland measurement technology.

He said 76% of these farmers were convinced of the benefits of grassland measurement and they made the decision to either adopt or reject grassland measurement technology.

However, he found that only 18% continued to measure their grass. The main reasons for not measuring after initial adoption from farmers was a lack of continued support.