The Association of Farm Contractors in Ireland (FCI) has written to Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue requesting an immediate extension to the period for shallow cultivation or sowing a crop post-harvesting.

The deadline dates, according to FCI, will be impossible to achieve due to poor harvesting conditions and three weeks of heavy rainfall.

Shallow cultivation or sowing of a crop must take place within 14 days of harvesting, according to the Department of Housing.

The FCI believes that now is the appropriate time to use the power available to the Minister to advise the Minister for Housing of the urgency of the harvest situation and why the 14-day cultivation condition should not apply in 2023.

Priority

“The immediate priority of our FCI members who provide combine harvesting, straw management and cultivation services to thousands of Irish farmers is now to harvest the cereal crop of higher nutritional and monetary value, rather than devote scarce operator and machinery resources to harvesting straw and cultivation of soils,” said FCI chair John Hughes.

Due to wet weather conditions, he said that many FCI contractors have been forced to leave straw on the ground.

"This is due to a combination of laid crops, where harvesting necessitated working at lower header heights, thereby resulting in less favourable conditions for straw drying due to lower stubble heights combined with ongoing poor weather conditions,” he added.

“In these difficult circumstances, there is often a further requirement to ted and rake the straw in an effort to ensure that it is dry enough for baling.

"This adds a further machine operation with scarce time and machinery resources when the priority remains to harvest the cereal crop in the best possible conditions,” added Hughes.