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

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..

Tbh my kind of language is any farmer producing commidities in Western Europe now is an idiot bar maybe dairy but their efficiencies are being eroded for bogus enviro concerns. Feed grains make no money other than feed wheat into pregnant sow rations which is hard to do with mycotoxins.

Last year beans got 230odd per acre and straw chopping and oil seeds were worth 100 per acre up to a cap, ones to give a couple of % towards weaning lads off the americas and the other to drive soil health. There is a pilot scheme for cover crops covering the costs of seeds or something for winter cover run by a chap out of Johnstown castle. Pretending beef and scheep are brave little soliders operating without suckler cow schemes, enviro schemes for commonages and the like, it's disingenuous tbh.

And Donald, as per post 5 the idea of putting fym or slurry back on tillage land from unknown sources is like buying random flying herd type cows without a test or herd health status and hoping you don't buy in Tb/Johnes etc. Rye grasses and canary grass are a bitch you don't need never mind Bg or Rats tail fescue. I guess the adage is true you cant argue with stupid.

Incorrect, have you ever saved and used your own bedding?

In fact bedding from a coarse meadow, or rushes and grass et al, is far superior to straw.

Every calf buyer that comes into the yard here rearks on the quality and comfort of the bedding, plus ones not inclined to spare it if it's plentiful and cheap.

There's very little need for trucking straw around the country..

Have you ever saved and used your own bedding?

Top tip, it's not to be confused with gathering cow dung covered toppings!

Anyone with brain would know that there has to be a nice bit of grass and other vegetation through the rushes, a coarse meadow as I described. Also it has much better soakage than straw

There's plenty rushy fields around that aren't rock and bog.

Sending the dung to tillage man was a joke...

I have been cutting, piking, making reakes of rushes for over forty years. I think you are thinking of hay, if there is a lot of grass in it.

Even if you compare good hay against straw for bedding, it's a very poor second. I could supply rushes to a parish, but I still buy straw for my calves. I must be a pure fool