Farmers will be the focus at Tillage Day. The event - brought to you by the Irish Farmers Journal and supported by the Irish Seed Trade Association (ISTA) takes place on 7 November in the Killashee Hotel, Naas, Co Kildare.

The day will start off hearing from farms across the country with a panel discussion.

Farmers Tony Bell from Co Dublin and Patrick Kehoe from Co Wexford and agronomist Tom Murray from O’Shea Farms in Co Kilkenny will tell the audience what worked well and didn’t work well in the season gone by and provide some suggestions for the coming season.

All three participants are current or past participants in our From the Tramlines page in the Irish Farmers Journal.

Tony Bell, Dublin

Tony uses a strip tillage system and grows a large amount of maize on his farm.

He is a believer in cutting costs on farm and has his sums done for every crop that he is growing.

Tony is constantly innovating from bagging maize to strip tilling beans. Tony farms about 300ac in north Dublin of owned and leased land.

Patrick Kehoe, Wexford

Patrick has a mixed farm in Co Wexford and matches his tillage and sheep enterprise really well.

The farms is 210ac in size, with 170ac of that tillage and most of the land is light and free-draining soil.

He plants cover crops after winter barley for his sheep to graze over the winter.

Growing BYDV-tolerant varieties has been a game changer for Patrick to reduce risk with his winter barley, while the varieties usually ripen a bit early to get on top of planting cover crops.

He is a machinery enthusiast, but is very practical when it comes to scale-investing in machines that will make him more time efficient to get work done and work around family life.

Tom Murray, O’Shea Farms, Kilkenny

Tom has a busy job in O’Shea Farms looking at the farm’s own crops across about 1,200ac. The farm has potatoes, carrots, spring and winter barley and oats, winter wheat, forage maize and grass for the 400-cow dairy herd.

Crops are established using the plough, till, sow method. The farm receives about 1,100mm to 1,200mm of rain annually.

Getting winter crops established in recent years has been a challenge with the wet weather, but 2024 is helping to get rotations back on track.

Policy

Waterford man Pádraig Connery will chat to us about some of the current farming policies, as well as chatting about the year gone by and growing premium crops.

John Dunne from Co Cork will look to the future of the industry in the panel discussion to close out the day.

John farms part-time in Co Cork and is the cereal variety manager for Goldcrop and manages the Goldcrop varieties trials site on his farm, so he sees a lot of new technology coming through the trial site. He will discuss the challenges and opportunities for the Irish tillage sector.

Guest speaker

McGregor Farms’ farm manager David Fuller will be the guest speaker at Tillage Day. McGregor Farms on the Scottish Borders meet tough weather conditions on heavy soils.

Tickets

Tillage Day takes place at the Killashee Hotel, Naas, Co Kildare, on Thursday 7 November 2024, with stands from 8.30am and the conference from 9.30am until 4.30pm.

Tickets are €49.99 and include a two-course lunch. They can be purchased at www.ifj.ie/tillageday. See the full agenda here.

Pesticide advisers

There are 25 IASIS points available for pesticide advisers to meet continuous professional development requirements.

Exhibition area

There will be over 20 stands in the exhibition area on Tillage Day including machinery, plant protection, seed, fertiliser, merchants, technology and much more.