A new national tillage plan is being worked on by Department of Agriculture official, the Irish Farmers Journal has learned.

At Wednesday’s Irish Seed Trade Association open day in Co Cork, Barry O’Reilly, head of the crop policy evaluation and certification division at the Department, said his team is currently preparing an implementation plan for the Food Vision Tillage Group’s report.

O’Reilly added that “the area of tillage has remained stable”.

However, the Department had yet to release the preliminary crop area figures as of this Wednesday.

He said there has been a “slight decrease” in area. Figures from Goldcrop estimate an almost 2% decrease in tillage crop area and a drop in the cereal area of 10,000ha.

O’Reilly noted that new crop varieties will be key to the future of the industry.

He added that the Department of Agriculture is very supportive of regulations in the EU to allow the use of new genomic techniques in Ireland.