So European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski believes that mixed farming is the pathway to sustainability.

Speaking on the Food for Europe podcast, which was focused on the benefits of extensive livestock production, he expressed the opinion that intensive farming “is not a good solution for the future of European agriculture."

Instead, the outgoing commissioner, who is suddenly full of opinions now that it’s up to someone else to implement them, extolled the virtue of extensive farming, where livestock and crop production are mixed.

He wants this model of farming incentivised in the next CAP.

I’m going to leave aside the whole debate around exactly what these generic terms “intensive” and “extensive” are meant to mean in this context. Not because I don’t think there is a real issue around how these two words have become the centre of the debate around food sustainability when they have never been properly defined, leaving everyone using these words in terms of how they personally perceive them.

Tower of Babel

I think that’s a massive problem, one which has left the conversation rather like a tower of Babel. Not because we speak a couple of dozen different languages within the European Union, but because no matter how you translate it, without some form of common agreement on what defines “extensive", “intensive”, “sustainable” and “productive”, we are all talking at cross purposes and misunderstanding each other.

No, what I want to focus on is the idea that mixed farming is the way forward and should be incentivised. And I’m going to frame it in the context of an Irish Farmers Association tillage meeting I attended last Wednesday in Enniscorthy.

Specifically, in relation to a presentation by Teagasc’s Ciaran Hickey on the dos and don’ts of both voluntary schemes and compulsory Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) requirements.

Ciaran explained the requirements around cover crops. How they have to be planted by 15 September and the crop varieties that must be used.

He talked of how cover crops can be grown under ACRES and under new water quality incentive schemes. Cover crops can also be grown as an alternative to crops rotation rules.

Currently, two such rules pertain - one stipulating you must rotate at least two crops in each individual parcel within a four-year period, the other requiring a variety of crops across the tillage area in any given year (the so-called “three crop rule”).

It’s hoped that instead of having to comply with both these rules, farmers will have to comply with one or the other going forward. Anyway, the option was there this year for farmers to sow at least half their cereal area to cover crops as an alternative.

Hickey was clear as to his preferred option: “I like to see cover crops being sown, I like it even more if the farmer is availing of a payment for sowing and growing them,” he said.

Some cover crops are very good fodder. With there being so much talk around a potential fodder shortage this winter, cover crops are a very good option when grazed.

Cultivate entire field

But there is a catch. If being grazed, there are different rules around cover crops. For instance, when planting cover crops, you must cultivate the entire field, but if planning to graze, the outside three metres should be left unplanted.

I presume the thinking behind this is not to have stock grazing and excreting near the field’s extremities. In any event, that’s a decision a farmer has to make before planting.

In fact, if the cover crop is being planted under ACRES or for the other reasons outlined above, that decision has to be made prior to the closing of the BISS application period.

Ciaran Hickey also highlighted that there is also a need to bear the lieback rules in mind if planning to graze.

They stipulate that a lieback area, either stubble or grass, should be available when grazing cover crops, with the lieback area being at least 30% of the cover crop areas being grazed.

Complications pile up

This is where the complications get pretty complicated at a practical level for a farmer. Hickey showed a graphic of a 10ha field, with 7ha planted to the cover crop, and 3ha left as lieback.

With the rule already requiring three metres to be left unplanted, Hickey simply left 3ha around the ditches unplanted, with the inner 7ha planted. This is easier in theory than in practice.

A farmer wishing to comply with all the rules would have to have a minimum of 7ha in cover crop if that is what he was declaring in his BISS/ACRES and a maximum of 7ha if they wished to have the required 3ha of lieback.

There is literally no margin for error. This requires planting equipment with high-calibre GPS equipment governing it. Again, all these decisions must be made in May.

My colleague Siobhan Walsh outlined all this very well recently here.

I’m exhausted at this point and that’s just dealing with the implications and the complications of grazing cover crops.

And farmers at the meeting were expressing the same sentiments. Many of them have no intention of grazing cover crops or allowing them to be grazed this winter. It’s just too much hassle.

Full disclosure - I have cover crops, but they are not worth grazing. As we are in a rotation that involves brassicas - particularly cabbage - cover crop varieties such as fodder rape or stubble turnips are verboten.

Instead, we sow the likes of vetch and phacelia. They are really good from a soil structure improvement point of view, having deep roots, but are pretty useless for grazing.

So I was an observer of this conversation rather than an active participant. That said, if I had grazeable cover crops, would I be up for the complications of grazing? No, I wouldn’t.

Example

This is just one small example of the compliance burden placed on mixed farms. And the paperwork is another valid concern. If you think an animal register, animal remedies register and a fertiliser register are complicated, try adding the IGAS book and the IPM sheets required of a tillage farmer into the mix.

And if you are an average-sized farmer, on 35ha, it all gets very bitty.

Specialisation in farming has evolved because of the technical skills required to carry out any enterprise efficiently and profitably and the need for some minimum level of scale to make it worthwhile. Add in the equipment needed for any individual enterprise and now start adding in the entry-level equipment for a separate one. It all gets pretty prohibitive from a cost point of view.

And that’s before we think of the fact that different parts of this relatively small country lend themselves to different farm enterprises, depending on soil type and climate.

I understand the point the Commissioner is making, having grown up on a farm that had cows and cattle and horses and sheep and turnips and mangles and potatoes and sugar beet and hens and turkeys and strawberries. There are synergies to mixed farming.

But it’s also true that these synergies can be gained by tillage farmers and livestock farmers working together to grow crops and utilise slurry and FYM and graze cover crops while providing liebacks of grass fields.

That yields the benefits of specialisation and the synergy of integrated farming. Perhaps that’s what needs to be incentivised, Commissioner.