Know your market when growing forage

The maize area is expected to decline this season from approximately 23,500ha last year.

However, this decline is only predicted. The increase in winter cropping area and reasonable forage stocks are factors in this.

Beet area is always relatively stable due to access to machinery, but farmers should not plant either crop without a customer and demand for their product.

These crops are costly to grow and so are risky without an end market. Beet is slightly different – many farmers will grow it for themselves or clean it and sell it throughout the winter as they have always done and get along quite well with this. They know their market and have a fair idea of demand, so will adjust acreage with this.

Farmers growing maize for other farmers should really put some sort of a contract in place and organise a payment timeline.

The first of these payments should be at sowing. You also need to organise any agreements on slurry exports and critically, decide if the crop is covered or uncovered and who pays for harvesting and transport.

Teagasc has template agreements for growing forage available and they are a good starting point.

Getting into details like yield and quality are important, but weather will play a big role in this and this needs to be acknowledged.

Both maize and beet are valuable energy sources which can be locally grown and where farmers can work together can be great solutions to use land, machinery and expertise efficiently.