Common sense for once? Straw incorporation to be suspended for this year?

Its bulls**t, if the department brings out a scheme and farms plan around it, it has to be seen through, with the enforcement and limiting of p and k allowances by the above tillage farmers should be chopping as much as possible anyways, the muckswap arrangement just dosent work given haulage distances etc

terrible news. We’re 1 of the few around here that don’t chop any. And always bale straw dry. We were banking on at least €30 a bale this year to feed the hungry dairy men.

most goes into diet feeders.

In fairness you can't blame farmers for chasing subs, not that I'm agreeing with it.

What about anyone who has already chopped their straw this summer? Is there any comeback for them?

Over the last couple of years the government brought in 4 schemes that imo should never have come in and it's the same as giving a child sweets and then taking them away the child will always kick up a racket

The 4 schemes were straw incorporating scheme, ploughing up grass land and setting tillage crops irrespective of the quality of the land, lump sum for not harvesting crops last autumn and finally 40 an acre to grow tillage crops this year what these schemes achieved was a shortage of straw with an inflated price for the straw that was sold, a shortage of silage as grass land was now being used for tillage instead of grass, an inflated land rental market because fellas that knew very little about tillage foolishly though that with free money it was a no brainer. Where I come from their has been a lot of extra land put into tillage in the last couple of years by existing tillage men dairy farmers and some beef men and all this has resulted in is a big shortage of silage land I am not begrudging anyone getting money but the reality is most of these lads are actually worse off financially by chasing the supposed easy money and the government needs to stop interfering in the normal farming sector and you find over time that lads will farm whatever system is profitable

Maybe these stock farmers who regularly can’t fodder and bed their stock without being bailed points too a cull of the national herd is necessary on welfare grounds.

plenty around here would tell you of years they couldn’t give straw away and lads would drop you if they didn’t need it or they could get it cheaper elsewhere

There’s some amount of work in straw to get it right when the weather isn’t with you, it’s a hell of alot easier to throw on the chopper even without getting paid for it you have the p and k value from it. I don’t blame tillage lads one bit for signing up to it with all the shite that goes on with straw prices when it’s plentiful

straw isn’t scarce because of the chopping scheme

It’s scarce because of a poor year last year and a lot of tillage area going into grassland

My bil will sell anyone straw if they book it with him, but if you don’t take what you order or mess about with price or payment don’t come back looking for straw from him again is his view

I think the term your looking for is learned helplessness.

You make it sound like half of Connemara and west Kerry was ploughed

I am looking at dairy men and beef men that sat oats in very moderate ground in late May with basically no realistic hope of harvesting oats or bailing straw this would never have happened if the govt stopped interfering in day to day farming

The rights or wrongs of a scheme like this could be debated for ages. But the fact it was pulled so fast is worrying for all as how can anyone plan anything if minister could decide at a moments notice to cancel something like tams etc. Only thing I can think of is was going to cost someone alot of money who uses alot of straw and the high cost of it would cost them dear and it was no ordinary everyday farmer

Dairy farmer I presume you mean.

And truth be told it's the old "backward" farmer that would use more straw than the modern cubicle dairy farmer. And the old backward straw bedding farmer has zero representation with the minister but tillage farmers have this hard on for dairy farmers that it's them to be blamed for all their ills and all their lost money.

The trouble with this is when a tillage farmer goes on about a dairy farmer then they've lost another dairy farmer ally who could have bought their cereal direct but now deals instead with the merchant instead of direct. So the more tillage farmer curse those damned dairy farmers the more the merchant laughs his hole off and wins.

They pulled the straw chopping scheme because teagasc told them to. It's as simple as that. Teagasc can do or say no wrong in their eyes, they are the best brains in the industry. 🤣🤣

Just like cow banding, teagasc's half assed job was accepted as perfect and enacted without listening to any sense from anyone else. Tweaked it then the following year. They're all a joke.

I don't know about that, Dept don't answer to anyone. Listen to the mood music - ICMSA came out this week with an Armageddon fodder survey, so did Tirlan. That followed on from a more moderate position reported by Teagasc a few weeks back, who if anything under-reported the feed deficit nationally. ICOS have said that they have no intention of importing emergency fodder next year because they go badly burned in 2018. ICSA are calling for a fodder production measure and IFJ have carried plenty of tales of woe about fodder too. I'd say it has all added up to the SIM getting a year off, because the last thing Charlie Mac wants is hungry stock in the middle of an election campaign next spring.

The solution will be a partial incentive payment to tillage growers in a fudge that will allow them sell their bales. Isn't that what they want (and some do already) anyway?

That would be ideal for the year that's in it, but the big problem for the Minister is that the EU Commission will seek verification as regards the purpose of the payment.

The Dept can't just give out EU funds like sweets without making farmers do something for it. Look at the hoops lads are put through for ACRES, SCEP, KT groups etc- that's all to satisfy the Commission that the EU are getting value for money on the ground. Answers on a postcard as to what Charlie can say the cash is for.

My Contact in teagasc told me ages ago that they had told the department to scrap the straw chopping. Made no sense to teagasc.

Max was 10k no? 100 acres at 100 per acre?

You could very well be right..