Grass growth has halted completely on the farm this week with a severe soil moisture deficit shutting down the grass plant completely.

We got 8mm of rain over the last few days but it has had no real impact on ground, with the sun and breeze soaking the moisture out of the soil almost as quickly as it fell.

We had some good grass covers built up from earlier on in July, so that has allowed us to keep silage out of the diet up to now, but we had to open the pit this week and will feed silage at night until we get significant rain to turn things around again. We will feed cows in the yard with access to a paddock beside the yard to lie down for the night.

We still have enough grass on the farm to graze by day for the next couple of weeks, with the silage helping to extend this as much as possible. We are feeding our maximum of 5kg of meal for the last two weeks and will continue this as well until we can remove silage from the diet again.

There is some rain forecast for next weekend, so hopefully we get enough to get things back on track soon. We live in Ireland after all so things should turn quickly enough.

We had some good grass covers built up from earlier on in July, so that has allowed us to keep silage out of the diet up to now

We have some heavy covers built up on the out-farm for the heifers to graze, so that should keep them going until rain arrives. They are well grown and hopefully well in-calf so a bit of poorer quality feed for a short time shouldn’t have too much of an affect on them.

The calves are on the same block of ground, but we have some aftergrass from baled silage for them to graze for the next couple of weeks. That should keep them growing well for the moment and we can see how everything looks again periodically over the next few weeks.

Everything else on-farm is steady as she goes really this week. We will get some slurry out on the paddocks with lower covers to hopefully help them to kick on quickly when rain comes and we will spread a round of fertiliser on most of the grazing block again in anticipation of getting some decent rain through the first half of August.

We have managed to minimise the impact of the dry summer fairly well so far this year, but long-term we will probably have to look at more mitigation strategies for droughts in this part of the country. Having learned from 2018, we have plenty of silage on-farm at the moment, which is probably a good first step along this process.

The climate is changing and our farms are changing with it so we will have to adjust our management to match those changes

The climate is changing and our farms are changing with it so we will have to adjust our management to match those changes as we move forward into more uncertain times.

To add insult to injury, the finger of blame for the changing climate is being firmly pointed at Irish farmers from so-called experts in our own country. These experts and policymakers wish to decimate agriculture as we know it in Ireland over the next 10 years.

It is ludicrous to think that at a time when food is getting scarcer and more expensive all over the world, that these people want us to cut back production in Ireland while at the same time ignoring the very large elephant in the room in the form of the fossil fuel sector.

Ireland, as a reliable high quality food producer, will become increasingly important in the coming years as other countries struggle more and more with real droughts and even famines.

It would be extremely irresponsible and short-sighted of our policymakers to reduce our capacity to produce good, healthy, nutrient dense food at this time.

Hopefully, this sinks in at Government level soon before we have to get out on the streets like our Dutch counterparts to defend the future of our sector.