Standing in front of Mark Deane’s milking parlour near Carrigtwohill in east Cork, all you see are the shiny black hills across the road from the farm. A few years ago, these fields were growing grass or grain but have now been taken over by solar farms.

The same sight is replicated right across east Cork, and indeed in many other parts of the country where solar farm operators are offering over €3,000/ha to lease land for renewable energy.

Forty miles away in the heavier land near Liscarroll, where Darragh Scully is farming, there is a big increase in land destined for forestry, with farms being carved up and waiting to be planted.

Both of these pressures on land-use are presenting new obstacles to young farmers like Mark and Darragh that want to farm and want to milk cows.

More often, the narrative is that young people don’t want to farm and especially don’t want to milk cows.

However, both Mark and Darragh are part of a discussion group of young farmers, many from non-farming backgrounds that are hell bent on running their own farms, if given the opportunity.

Next steps

Most of the 16 members of the Future Vision group are managing dairy farms and are now looking to take the next step towards leasing their own farm or going into partnership with a farmer on an existing business.

The group have come together to publish a booklet with a mini profile of each member, their backgrounds, current employment status and what they would like to do next.

It’s a prospectus for their talents and the hope is that retiring dairy farmers will connect with them.

Increased demand for land; whether from solar, forestry, anaerobic digesters, or established dairy farmers looking to work around new nitrates rules is a real threat to these young farmers looking to get into dairying and inject much needed new blood into the sector.

Retiring dairy farmers without a successor have more options than ever, but just going for the most financially lucrative option may not be the best decision.

By working with a dedicated and highly skilled young farmer, preferably through a long-term lease agreement they will continue to see cows being milked on their farm and investment in facilities and soil fertility will continue.

So too will the buzz around the farm when cows are milked twice a day.

On top of that, the milk will continue to be collected by the co-op, securing highly skilled jobs in the local area.

An agricultural mechanic by training, Mark Deane left that sector to pursue a role as a farm manager in 2015 and hasn’t looked back. Even though his parents aren’t farming, they are from farming backgrounds and his father Billy Deane is well known from his role in World Wide Sires. While Billy and Mark may differ on the ideal cow breed, they are passionate about cows and farming.

For the last 12 months, Mark has been managing a 48ha leased farm outside Carrigtwohill in east Cork for dairy farmer Joe Deane, no relation. The majority of the 144 cows on the farm are owned by Joe, but Mark is leasing in 16 of his own cows. He is also leasing 20ha of his own, on which he is carrying 70 beef calves to yearling stage and also contract rearing 80 heifers to housing time.

The 35-year-old owns 17 in-calf heifers of his own so in total has 33 cows calving down next year. It’s his ambition to lease a farm of his own next year using these cows along with purchasing whatever cows are on the farm.

Generate

In terms of scale, Mark reckons the minimum farm size is somewhere between 120 and 150 acres in order to generate enough to pay the lease and a wage for himself. Together with his wife Claire they have two young children and have bought a house in Ladysbridge near Midleton, so his ideal location for a farm to lease is within 20 to 30 minutes’ drive from there.

Technical performance on the farm he’s currently managing is excellent, and it’s clear that Mark is a very keen farmer. The herd achieved a 10.5% not-in-calf rate after 10.5 weeks of breeding and the herd is on track to deliver 420kg to 430kg MS/cow this year.

With just 9.3t DM/ha of grass grown to date the dry weather is really catching Mark out on this dry, limestone farm surrounded by quarries. Five acres of beet is currently being grazed for an hour per day each morning. The cows started grazing this three weeks earlier than planned due to the low grass growth rates with average farm cover about half of what it should be at 660kg DM/ha.

Mark explains that the cows start off grazing the beef for just 10 minutes per day, but this is increased by 10 minutes each day up to one hour.

At one hour per day, he has it worked out that the cows consume 3kg DM of beet. He moves the fence 1.5 drills each day.

When asked what it is that he loves about farming, being his own boss and working outdoors with animals rank high, he says;

“I’m an honest, hardworking guy that wants to make a living from farming. I take pride in my work and if given the opportunity to lease a dairy farm I would treat it like my own.

“The appearance of any farm is very important, as it’s like a shop window for the farmer.

“I think dairying is a very satisfying job as you get a return on your work almost instantly in terms of milk yield and fat and protein per cent. At the end of the day, dairying is as hard as you want to make it,” he says.

Twenty-seven-year-old Darragh Scully is an example of a Future Vision group member that has taken the next step towards leasing or in his case partnership on a leased farm. In 2019, Darragh went into partnership with dairy farmer Shane Horgan, whom he worked with while on placement at Munster Technological University.

The partnership is on a 113ha leased farm at Liscarroll where the pair are now milking 260 cows. Initially, the seed capital for the business came from Shane and Darragh, where €100,000 of equity was put up in an 80:20 basis and the rest of the investment was borrowed and is paid back by the partnership.

Darragh runs the farm and for this he gets paid a wage as a farm manager and a profit share based on the equity arrangement. Over time, Darragh has increased his share of the equity to 35% but will be at 50% by the end of the year. This means that he will effectively own half of the cows and machinery by the end of this year. He has taken out a loan to increase his share of the partnership.

Darragh is from a non-farming background but got hooked on farming at a young age and it has always been his goal to have his own farm.

Goal

“My goal all along was to have maybe 100 cows on a leased farm but going into partnership with Shane on a bigger farm has definitely been the better decision. If there’s any issues or challenges I just bounce things off Shane. We also have economies of scale and it’s a big help in terms of labour and getting time off as we can afford fulltime labour on the farm,” he says.

Darragh says there were plenty of challenges in the first few years with animal health and if it wasn’t for the support of Shane and Sinead Horgan, he says he doesn’t know how he would have got through it. Another big benefit is to do with financial budgeting, an area that Darragh agrees isn’t covered enough in college or by Teagasc.

“When we looked at the farm first we both went away and did our own cashflow forecasts then we came together and compared them and pooled them together and looked at different scenarios.”

Enthusiasm is infectious and being on farm with both Darragh and Mark is a great tonic in a difficult year for farming. Both are getting ahead because they are getting support and mentoring from established farmers. By letting them grow and develop they ultimately lose them, but the young guys benefit and so too does the industry.

There are lessons here for everyone. Retiring farmers should be looking to work with these young people and give them opportunities as opposed to just opting for the most established operator. This could be one of the reasons why the Land Mobility Service is not delivering for members of the Future Vision group, who are keen but don’t have the same track record as an established farmer looking at a second or third unit.

It’s great to see the enthusiasm for dairying is as strong as ever among this group. It needs to be nurtured and realised.