I was recently at one of the open days at AFBI Hillsborough and was extremely impressed at the effort that they put into the two-day event.

While a lot of the material presented to farmers was nothing new to me as I had been involved with some of the projects, it was still great to see someone putting in a significant effort to transfer this knowledge to others.

I think that the transfer of knowledge is one of the most important aspects of productive agriculture.

There is no point in developing innovative technologies unless you can get farmers and others to adopt these technologies.

Host visits

Down through the years, I have always tried to adopt some of the latest technologies and then host farm visits to try and demonstrate it to others. To that end, I joined the CAFRE-led Technology Demonstration Farm (TDF) project in 2020.

This programme has been useful in helping support me in the organisation and delivery of farm visits and to show others the innovative technologies trialled here. Hopefully the visits have been extremely useful to most of the farmers who attended these workshops. All the feedback I get is incredibly positive.

For the time spent preparing and delivering these TDF meetings I get a small remuneration which helped cover the expenses. It has been a very worthwhile exercise and one that I thought was going to continue for another few years.

Disappointed

I was extremely disappointed when I received an email at the start of this year to say that the money for TDF visits had run out in that budget year.

However, there was an expectation that once we got into a new tax year (from April onwards), the funding would be reinstated and the TDF visits could start again.

April came and went and there was no further correspondence, so I presumed that it was ok to arrange TDF meetings again.

My son and I went ahead and arranged two TDF meetings only to be told that there was still no money available.

The word back was that there would be no funding until at least the end of the summer, if it came back at all. I was really horrified. The summer is, by far, the best time for farm visits.

I do not know exactly what is going on, but it looks like some unbelievably bad mismanagement.

It is really unfortunate that the business development groups, farm innovation visits and TDF’s have all disappeared without anything being put in their place.

You would think, if there was any forward thinking, there would have a replacement in place before you would get rid of something that was working reasonably well.

I hate being negative, but what has happened is probably not surprising. Down through the years, good agricultural programmes have been abandoned and failed to be replaced. If we ran our farms the way agricultural policy is run, then we would all be out of business.

I appreciate that there are some who are running a series of on-farm meetings over the summer and this is to be commended, but it is really only a sticking plaster.

Interaction

My son and I decided that we should go ahead with our farm visits, even without funding and support. We had two exceptionally good meetings and a lot of interaction with the other farmers who, I believe, gained a lot from these events. I honestly believe that knowledge transfer needs to move up the ladder before it is too late, and the majority of farmers are left behind.