I read online that Mike Magan called for a tillage summit at the latest meeting of the fodder and food security committee. He’s chair of said committee.

From what I hear, while food is in the title of that committee it rarely gets talked about with regards to things like flour, vegetables, oil or potatoes – all things we can produce here in Ireland. So it might be no harm if there was a summit.

The last tillage forum fell by the wayside having been established in 2017.

There are now just 100 vegetable growers across the country, we are only 60% sufficient in potatoes and we are not producing flour for milling at any great scale.

Tillage farmers would no doubt be interested to know that at the latest fodder meeting, the Department of Agriculture talked about discussing the maximum residue limits on imports, presumably to ensure enough feed comes into the country.