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Policies need to be put in place to safeguard the tillage sector and tie in with the other livestock sectors to alleviate some of the problems on their farms, Barry Larkin, the CEO of Acorn Independent Merchants, has said.
He said that the tillage sector has a huge role to play in meeting the end-goal for sustainable Irish agriculture.
“There are many credentials associated with tillage. It is, by far, the lowest emitting sector, and it is second in profitability to dairy production. If we could join up the dots with a lot of the challenges on the livestock sector with what benefits can be taken from the tillage sector, we might have a more holistic approach.
“As an overall agricultural industry, we experience our impact at a local level, but it’s not right that we cap our production here for it to be displaced by a less efficient [country] in another part of the world,” Larkin told Thursday's Agricultural Science Association (ASA) conference.
Land market
He said the change to the derogation is probably going to drive the land market “even more crazy” than it already has been in the last 12 months.
“That was kicked off by the nitrates derogation in terms of banding, and where the dairy sector had to try and get more land was predominantly from the conacre land market, which was historically taken up by the tillage sector.
“That is going to be further compounded in the year ahead if we don’t have polices in place to safeguard the tillage sector,” he said.
Positive
Tillage is a very carbon-efficient industry that could offset some of the carbon that is produced from the other sectors, he added.
“What I mean by that is that tillage is the only sector that has the possibility to be positive.
“The credentials associated [with the tillage sector] are not just related to greenhouse gas emissions, but nitrogen (N) utilisation. A tillage crop has the ability to utilise up to 70% of applied N, in comparison to grassland which stands somewhere around 30%.
“It makes sense for us to at least maintain production, ringfence what we have there and not to have it rot away in the corner, like we have in the recent past.”
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