The annual Nuffield Ireland conference took place in Tullow, Co Carlow last Friday.

'Shaping the future of Irish agriculture' was the ambitious title of this year's conference.

Each year, the internationally affiliated organisation holds a conference to review the reports from those who were awarded travel bursaries to look at specific areas of policy and production that should have relevance in Ireland.

Most of them had travelled widely visiting countries in Asia, South and North America as well as Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

The first topic was 'The future of plant and horticulture production in Ireland', with two presenters Thomas Murray of O'Shea farms in Kilkenny and Liagh Whelehan, who is an assistant manager in a bedding and pot plant nursery in Wexford.

I ended up apprehensive about the future of commercial horticultural crops in Ireland.

While Thomas Murray dealt mainly with potatoes and carrots, Liagh Whelehan despite her employment in the amenity/leisure end of the business, also spoke about the business and technical difficulties facing the sector.

Among these were a lack of independent research, a continuing withdrawal of effective chemicals, long supply chains, below cost selling, cheap imports and a resistance to new technical developments such as gene editing.

The main carrot variety grown in Ireland has been around since the 1980s. If the attendance was expecting an answer from the Bord Bia representative Michael Slawski they were likely to have been disappointed.

He mainly focused on Bord Bia's promotional work but did acknowledge some of the other problems such as the State body's procurement policies and the need for a replacement of peat as a growth medium.

Diversification

The second session was on farm diversification and people management. The two speakers had very different perspectives and topics, and the organisers might have usefully considered having had a separate session on each.

The first on farm diversification was Margaret Edgill. After a varied and successful career, she has returned to the family farm in Daingean, Co Offaly. She is concentrating on agri-tourism, and her presentation was forceful and crystal clear in its recommendations.

She saw agri-tourism as a major sector in Europe, but in Ireland there was no national vision or policy for it unlike in much of continental Europe, especially Italy and Slovenia.

There were lots of agencies involved, which she listed as the Department of Agriculture, Teagasc, Fáilte Ireland, the local enterprise boards, LEADER, the county councils.

She called for a national steering group to be set up with a national agri-tourism policy to be agreed and key performance indicators developed. “We need legislation and policy intervention,” she concluded.

Whether anything develops after such a clear outline of the sector's needs remains to be seen.

Gillian Willis is now with ifac, the farm accountancy body, having previously been at Bord Bia where she was its small business manager.

She compared Ireland with Chile where, after a period of strong economic growth, there was now a significant importation of workers onto farms from other countries.

This new development, as well as the need for competent committed farm staff, has made the attraction and retention of them increasingly vital. This has obviously been identified as an important new area by ifac as it expands its business and service offering.

Clover

The final reporting section looked at the place of clover in Irish grassland farming and pasture management to address the nitrates challenge.

Bryan Daniels from Kilkenny reported on his extensive travels looking at clover.

A former FBD young farmer of the year and Teagasc grassland farmer of the year, he gave the stocking rate of 2.2 livestock units/ha as the level where clover could displace all nitrogen fertiliser on a farm.

He called for the co-ops to pay a sustainability bonus to dairy farmers meeting this target.

He asserted that in general, the co-ops were more interested in farmers using clover to bolster their own sustainability credentials rather than improving their suppliers profitability.

His paper provided good guidelines for the farm fertility levels to be reached if clover was to be successful, as well as dealing with weed control and possible compaction.

Emo, Co Laois dairy farmer David Fennelly and Michael Egan of Teagasc Moorepark gave an informed and worthwhile view on how the retention of the nitrates derogation might be achieved.

The first suggestion was that a water quality management plan be developed for each dairy farm. This is an ambitious recommendation but as was clearly said, time is not on our side.

The proposal was made that the advisors currently employed on the Signpost programme be moved to work in this area.

The second proposal was that each farm calculate its nitrogen surplus for the year. The use of clover and biological additives for slurry treatment were added as extra useful tools to reduce nitrate losses. Nevertheless, my end impression was that the nitrate derogation will be difficult to retain.

The special interview was held with Siobhán Talbot, former managing director of Glanbia, while the special award in memory of Padraig Walshe, went to Tom Murray.