Teagasc Dairy Scientist Padraig French welcoming farmers to the workshop

Last week I attended the Dairy Business Expansion Conference near Kilkenny.  I thought it was great!   About 175 farmers, all clients, attended this Teagasc day-long event.  It was actually a test of the method and topics.  The week before, about 15 Teagasc dairy advisors (extension agents) met at the site with researchers to discuss how best to teach the topics on the day.    

One of Ireland’s stated goals is to expand milk production by 50% in the year 2020 over the 2007’s production.  The European Union’s dairy marketing quota ends on April 1, 2015.  Dairy farming, on average, is the most profitable type of farming in Ireland.  So, many dairy farmers are looking to expand, and non-dairy farmers are thinking about getting started.  The point of the Conference was to get farmers thinking about and working on the nuts and bolts of a possible expansion.   

The main topics for the day were:  1) Return on your investment; 2) Managing cash flow; and 3) Dealing with risk.  Farmers were made up into groups of 15-10 people, and they stayed with their group for the day (which ran from 10 am to 3 pm).     

Last minute preparations in front of the shed with calf pens. Note hay bales used as sound-deadeners in front of shed, there is an identical shed to the right of the bales.

The day began with a short welcome.  Farmer groups moved into the calf sheds for a 1-hour session:  Return on Investment.  There was plenty of discussion as farmers figured how much a given farm would need to invest for a certain expansion.  We found plenty of places to invest:  soil fertility and reseeding; water, fencing, and roadways for grazing infrastructure; milking facilities; wintering facilities and manure storage; and cows and heifers.  Next:  how much of your own money do you put in versus how much to borrow?  Would your bank lend you this kind of money?  Do you need to invest that much?  Our group had a good discussion on how much overrun to plan on.  Experience at the Greenfield Farm shows at least 10% is a good figure.  One farmer in our group said that any overrun shows poor budgeting and estimating!  Then the groups worked on a partial budget to calculate potential profit from the additional cows, and compared that to the additional assets and equity put into the expansion to calculate a return on assets and return on investment.  We were plenty busy for an hour!    

The modest milk room at Greenfields farm, with milking parlor in shed behind the green building

Farmers headed outside to look at cows and pasture and hear about how the Greenfield Farm is doing compared to their plan of 3 years ago:  budget versus actual.  Then back into the sheds for Cash Flow work.  The groups estimated milk income, and several of the important costs.  They used 1 year of actual figures and estimated for the next 5 years.  They had to estimate principal and interest payments, add up the columns and look at the Bottom Line.  Which years were negative?  How much?  What could be done to either fix that or live with it?   

Next- lunch!  Then a look at how physical production of grass and cows are doing compared to the original plan, and in the very wet year last year and very dry summer of 2103. The last small group work was on Risk.  Farmers brainstormed the risks involved with this expansion.  Then picked 4 of the risks and thought about the likelihood of it happening, the impact of it happening, the cost if it happened, what the owner could do to minimize that risk or deal with the occurrence, how much would it cost to manage that risk, and what would be some early warning signs of a problem coming?    

Teagasc Dairy Advisor Catherine Colfer with dairy farmers at Greenfield farm

Farmers left with the worksheets they had filled out during the day and blank worksheets to work with for their own farm.  They were directed to where some of these tools are located on the Teagasc Client website.  The conference was full, and there may be a second one.  The dairy advisors who ran the small groups now have better skills to work with their clients who are considering an expansion.    

To me, the day was a big success:  farmers were definitely discussing what capital improvements were needed, what they might cost, how to do it cheaper, talking about borrowing money, and really thinking about what risks an expanding dairy faces and what could be done about those risks. 

Intro to the Monitor Farm walk

 Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Monitor Farm Walk in County Wicklow.  A Monitor Farm is a farm agrees to work closely with Teagasc and their milk coop, in this case Glanbia coop.  A Teagasc Advisor works with the farmer to measure grass and cow productivity, soil testing, milk testing, and financials.  The farmer agrees to make changes that will show the use of best practices, and to open the farm up for articles, newsletters and ‘walks.’  On 8/28, about 60 farmers visited Fortgranite Farm.

Pier Dennis, owner and partner, watching the discussion about the new parlor

Pier Dennis owns the real estate of the farm, and is in an operating partnership with John Roche.  They are milking 125 cows now, with the plan of getting up to 170 cows in 2015 (when the EU dairy marketing quota ends).  Dairy farm partnerships are a pretty new idea here in Ireland.   

Dairying in Ireland is much different than in Vermont.  Dairy marketing quota has been the limiting factor, putting a limit on the amount of milk that could be sold.  So making milk as cheaply as possible has been the way to increase profits.  This farm is planning on expanding by keeping all dairy heifer calves.  They plan on shipping more fat and protein per cow from their breeding program (they are paid for this, not for volume, since most milk is turned into dairy products for export).

a nice Friesian heifer

The second stop for the day was grass growth.  The farmers had a budget for the supply and demand of grass by week though the end of October.  The plan includes how many cows would be on the grass, and amount they would be eating.  As grass growth slows down in the fall, they have will be removing late lactation cows from the pastures and putting them into a free-stall barn and begin feeding them grass silage.  The budget included how much grass they wanted left in the fields at the end of the season, because the grass continues to grow very very slowly during the winter, and the grass needs leaf surface area in the early spring to start growing again.  The ground is not covered by snow for a couple of months here.  The Gulf Stream usually hits Ireland head-on, making for a mild winter.

Talking about low P soils

Next stop, Soil Fertility.  There was a soil test comparison report from 2008 and 2013.  This report was set up so that you could see the % of fields testing high medium and low for pH, P, and K.  It was very easy to notice that the pH of the soils had moved from nearly half below a pH of 6, to over 90% having a pH of over 6.  Advisors said that this change in acidity ‘released a bag of urea per hectare per year.’  The news for P and K was just as obvious, but not as good.  They had moved from no soil tests being deficient in P to over half being deficient.  And K had moved in the same direction, but not so bad. 

In general in Ireland, the P levels in the soil have dropped.  People are speculating that this is due to the Nitrate Directive from the European Union 7 years ago that limited the amount of N that could be applied.  Farmers began applying less manure and purchased fertilizer per acre.  As this happened, the amount of P that the soils were receiving from manure went down.  And to make matters worse, farmers were reading the target rates of P application as limits, so were buying fertilizer with a lower level of P.   Advisors said that moving a soil P test from level 1 (low) to 3 (a high average) would ‘feed a cow for the winter, provide another 1.5 T more grass per hectare.’  (There is a shorter winter feeding season here than in Vermont!)

Bulk Milk Disease Screening.  A veterinarian with the Glanbia dairy cooperative spoke about tests that the coop conducts on milk samples from each member farm.  They test for BVD, IBR, Lepto, Salmonella, plus stomach worms, liver fluke, and the Schmallenberg virus (that is relatively new in the country).  The vet described what the readings on the tests meant, how the readings varied by season, the impact of the diseases, and what additional treatments or vaccinations this herd could be doing for these diseases.  One question about Johnnes disease brought the response that they cannot test bulk milk samples for Johnnes, it is too dilute in samples from the bulk tank.  There is a voluntary Johnnes program now in effect.

Outside the new parlor, note: no exterior wall!

The last stop was milk quality and the new milking parlor.  The advisor pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the new parlor.  He made the suggestion that the best thing to do with hi cell count cows is to cull them, ‘give them to God.’  Or if you needed the milk, you could dry off the quarter.  He gave high praise to the California Mastitis Test, the paddle with 4 test pits.  Make sure that people were using gloves while milking to avoid spreading bacteria from cow to cow.  And advised people to be aware of how hard their water was if they were mixing teat sprays, and when washing dairy equipment.

These Monitor Farms exist around the country, with many different coops involved.  They are a means to get information out to farmers via ‘show and tell.’  Farmers have plenty of opportunity to talk while walking from one stop to another.  And there is plenty of time for questions, comments and discussion.  This is the home page for one group of Monitor Farms, http://www.teagasc.ie/areaunits/teagasc_glanbia/index.asp

Follow this link to a recent post written for the VT New Farmer Project:

What is Your Competitive Advantage?

Last week’s weather gave enough rain to keep crops growing and enough dry weather to get grain in. Unfortunately there were enough hours of wet weather, that Met Eireann, the national weather bureau, had a ‘National Weather Warning’ on their website. ‘Status Yellow. Blight warning. Blight conditions are expected to continue through Wed and Thurs, with very limited opportunities for spraying. Issued Wed, 8/14/13.’ People here take their potatoes very seriously.

Grain in dealer’s yard, Tullow

Apparently the hot dry weather encouraged spring grains along in good shape, making them ready for harvest a little early. Livestock farmers are aware of a looming shortage of feed. So, there has been a good market for chopping grain before it is ready for the combine and putting it into bunker silos. Another option has been to buy grain from the neighbor’s combine and treat it with urea or a preservative to mix with forages come winter. And the straw market is busy too. Livestock farmers are buying straw for winter bedding and, perhaps, as a forage. As you can see from these pictures, a lot of grain is being delivered into grain depots, with huge piles of grain on paved yards, waiting to go into driers, then into storage. Some farmers have their own driers, and then can store grain at home to sell later. Most put the grain from the combine into a trailer, and haul the trailer to the mill with their tractor. So it is common now to see tractors and trailers on the roads moving grain to market.

Grain in mill’s yard

With world-wide grain prices moving downwards due to what looks like a huge US corn (maize) crop, harvest-time prices for grain are less than what Irish tillage farmers were hoping for. At Teagasc this week, a friend told about her husband taking a load of winter barley to the mill. He had planted the right variety, and fertilized it right, in order to meet the standards for malting barley. It was rejected because it was a little too high in protein. And the mill would not give a price on buying it as feed barley- he could unload it, and find out the price later. A couple of loads of his, and other farmers’, were rejected due to high protein. This farmer did bring in loads later in the week that met the malting specifications. Barley that will be used to make beer is malting barley. The protein has to be just right in order for the beer’s head to form properly and the fermentation to be just right. Higher protein would be good for a barley going to feed animals, but there is a good premium (about $25/T) paid for malting barley- the feed market is a poor second. Some tillage farmers have contracts with grain buyers, or maltsters, but the grain must meet the specifications. Maltsters take barley and allow it to germinate, and then dry it to stop the seedling from growing any further. This gets the chemical process going to turn the starch in the grain into a sugar that yeast can ferment and turn into beer. Beer and whiskey are big industries here in Ireland, with lots of jobs depending on moving these ag-based products onto the world market.  And this foreign trade is just what the Irish economy needs.  Think Guinness stout and Jamison Irish Whiskey, to name just a couple.

Nice group of Freisian heifers

There is high interest from farmers with suckler cows to switch to dairy: there could be 20 times more profit per acre. Suckler cows are the same as a beef brood-cow operation. Cows are bred to produce a calf, and then usually the calf is sold in the fall, so only the pregnant cows are over-wintered on the farm. The cow may be a dairy cow, or part-dairy so they will produce a lot of milk, then bred to a beef breed to get some meat onto that calf.
A big article in the ‘Irish Farmers Journal,’ 17 August, 2013, page 28, ‘Profit driven suckler to dairy conversion,’ describes one farmer’s experience. David Kirwan had been a suckler farmer for 32 years, and had developed a good herd of 120 cows. He has been working with Teagasc and the Irish Farmers Journal in a beef production demonstration program. A son will be starting at one of the Teagasc ag-colleges this fall, and David is wants to set up the farm so it could create an income for a second family, in case after graduation, the son wants to come back and farm. If not, he would hire a full time employee or manager.
David applied for dairy quota, and got enough for 55 cows in the first year, and 75 cows this year. He plans on milking 150 in the next few years. Dairy quota ends in April, 2015. The barn was in good shape, but he had to add on, put in a parlor, milk room and calf barn. Plus he made some improvements in lanes and roads to get cows to all of the paddocks, and to get additional drinking water into the paddocks. So far that has cost him about $160,000. Quota was another $80,000, dairy cows cost $200,000 (about $1800/head). He sold his beef herd for $250,000. So, his total investment now is about $1300/cow.
David’s familiarity with cows is obvious when you get into the details. The first batch of dairy cows that he bought was 55 pregnant dry cows, all from one herd. This year he bought another 29 cows, plus 27 heifer calves this year (so they freshen in spring 2015- when the dairy quota ends). In the first year of selling milk, he averaged over 14,000 lbs of milk/cow, while feeding 1.1 T of concentrate per cow. (The national average is about 11,500 lbs of milk/cow, so the difference is due to pasture and cow management.)
David and his wife Isobel thank their Teagasc advisor, Seamus Kearney for helping to guide them. They do not think they should be held out as a ‘how-to’ example of converting to dairy. But they are hopeful that the changes they are making will improve the long-term profitability of their farm.

The weather is back to a good combination of moisture, sun, and warmth to get that grass growing again. Some second cut silage and wrapped round bales getting harvested. Tillage farmers are working to complete the combining of the winter barley. Everyone is quite pleased with the yields and the grain weight per bushel. Most of the straw is getting baled and put away also. Spring barley is following soon, a bit early due to July’s heat.  I have not seen much combining before, it was interesting yesterday to see little whirlwinds blowing the straw up 20-30 feet into the air. It was a good dry day. 

Dairy and livestock farmers are happy to see the grass growing again, but are still concerned about how much stored feed they will have for this coming winter.  Teagasc has a big push going on to encourage farmers to inventory their feed, estimate how much they will need, and make plans now to cull animals and to line up feed to buy.

Teagasc GM potato plots

Quite a variety of research goes on here at Oak Park. From plant breeding, variety trials, to genome mapping of perennial ryegrass to a GM potato study. 

Yesterday I had lunch with 2 people who are plant researchers here. Both were studying fungus diseases of food crops: wheat and potato. In order for a fungus to infect a plant, the leaf surface must be damp. The dry weather in July was great for the plants, but bad for the fungus studies! The person who worked with the GM potato study had done enough watering to last her for a while.

The GM potato study here is part of a 22-nation study of varieties that are resistant to late blight. Late blight was the disease that caused the loss of several years of crop in the 1840s and ’50s, and the famine that killed a million-and-a-half, and led to the emigration of the same number of Irish people.  http://www.teagasc.ie/crops/potatoes/gm.asp

Genetically modified crops cannot be grown in the European Union. This ‘AMIGA’ project needed special approval. There are 15 EU member nations participating. You can read about it at www.amigaproject.eu and about the potato research at www.gmoinfo.ie.

Teagasc GM Potato Study

There are informational panels by the experimental plots. To grow potatoes here, it takes up to 15 applications of protective fungicides per growing season. Total value of potato crop losses across the EU is estimated to be $1.3 billion per year. ‘We are not advocates of GM, but we are advocates of public research. We are not producing GM potatoes for production or commercial purposes. Our role is to investigate the potential negative and/or positive impacts of GM technology in regard to this specific GM variety and then inform stakeholders and the general public as to conclusions drawn based on an Irish-specific research study.’

Farmers Journal. There is a good weekly paper here, ‘Irish Farmers Journal.’ In the last couple of weeks these items caught my attention and got me to thinking.  http://www.farmersjournal.ie
• 3 August, 2013, page 7. The article is ‘July milk powers on.’ The EU dairy marketing quota runs from April 1 to March 31.
o Each nation has a quota, each coop has a quota, and each farm has a quota of quantity of fat. If the country is over quota for the year, your cooop is over quota, and your farm is over quota, you pay a fine based on how much you were over. So famers keep an eye on how they are producing this year compared to last.
o This article says that July 2013 milk supplies have been 8-10% ahead of last year. The nation was 2.6% under quota at the end of June.
o There is a report on how different regions of the country are producing, and even with the late spring, the east is making a lot of milk.
o The article wonders if some farmers will risk paying a fine of half the milk price in the fall.
o The article reports that ‘some larger operators in the east that would not be able to pay (the over-quota fine) have already switched to once a day milking to reduce supply.’

• 3 August, 2013 page 8. The article is ‘Rabobank’s Henry calls for dairy industry consolidation.’
o ‘Rabobank is the largest lender to the Irish dairy industry.’ Funding both a national dairy exporting service, and major dairy coops.
o The EU dairy marketing quota is scheduled to end in 2015. And the national goal is to make more milk and to export more dairy products. ‘..asked a sticky question about where and how is all the extra milk going to be sold?’  Under the labels of individual coops- like Dairygold? Or under the Irish national brand- Kerrygold? There was no firm answer, but the answer will vary by product.
o There are big supermarkets here from Britain and Germany. A big question is what is the source of their fluid milk, butter and cheese? These supermarkets are major buyers of product in the EU (like Walmart in the US). Will these buyers be able to tempt coops to compete with the Irish national brand in the future? 

One of the big dairy coops is now building a large new processing plant.  It is located near a new motorway (interstate highway) and near a deep-water port.  The plan is to make butter and powder for export.
• 3 August, 2013 page 14. ‘Danger to environment by Japanese knotweed is highlighted in (Senate).’
o We know this weed as knotweed or Mexican bamboo. It grows mainly along rivers and brooks. And as we learned in the floods 2 years ago, that it is transported downstream in high water, where the roots that were broken in transport easily take root in the fresh silt that was deposited.  http://njaes.rutgers.edu/weeds/weed.asp?japaneseknotweed
o Here in Ireland it is moved by seed, along the roadsides as crews trim the hedges.
o ‘This plant is included in the list of the 100 most invasive alien species of the world.’
o ‘My department is keeping abreast of initiatives currently underway in Britain using a specific insect to control Japanese knotweed.’
o I haven’t seen the plant here in Ireland, but there is a lot of it in Vermont.

This has been quite a wet week.  Some real rain that has broken the drought.  Most of the fields have greened back up.  There is still concern about the quantity of forage (fodder) that will be available for the winter. 

I attended a dairy advisor training the other day, part of it was at a dairy farm near the town of Portlaoise.  John, a young fellow who has been operating the farm for 12 years, has a larger than average farm, with about 150 mature dairy cows, plus youngstock.  He has 210 acres, all in one block (which is quite unusual- most farms have parcels spread out over quite an area.)  The land is flat, with good access to all the paddocks (for cows and equipment), with water in each paddock.

He has been planning on a 4 month winter feeding season.  This spring he, like most farmers here, ran out of grass silage and round bales.  Luckily, his neighbor had enough to sell.  Now he is thinking of having enough feed for a longer winter, and trying to build his inventory (over a couple of years) to cover 5 months. 

Friesians and Jerseys at John’s farm near Portlaoise, Ireland

The 210 A usually provides enough feed.  His farm grows grass, perennial ryegrass.  Each field will be both harvested for haylage (by a contractor) and grazed.  He is averaging about 6 ton/A of dry matter now, and has a goal of getting up to 7.  (Well managed grass in Vermont can be up over 5 T/A.  Ireland has a milder climate, with usually no snow, and cows can start grazing late in March.  The perennial ryegrass- sometimes with clover- is a real high-yielding crop.)  John has been working on getting the pH, phosphorus and potash levels a bit higher, but is having a challenge getting the levels to go up. 

John is hoping to put more cows on when the EU dairy marketing quota ends in March, 2015.  Last year, he shipped about 10,500 lbs/cow, with 3.5% protein and 4.2% fat.  (An average herd would be about 12,500 lbs/cow with 3.4% protein and 4.2% fat.)  The herd is mainly Friesian (a cousin to the Holstein), with some Jerseys and some Holstein- Jersey crossbreds (that he will breed back to Friesians).  He fed a little less than a ton of concentrate per cow last year.  And he was not feeding grain to his youngstock.  He thought he might be a little over his milk quota, so he fed lots of milk to the calves, no grain.  He has a seasonal herd, so his herd started freshening on Feb 6, and half of them had calved by the 19^th! 

6-month old calves, John’s farm near Portlaoise, Ireland

The day we were there, the cows were giving 41 lbs of milk on all the pasture they could eat and 4.5 lbs of grain.  This is a different system than we are used to in Vermont, the Irish goal is to feed that grass and keep total costs down. 

Last week I mentioned the winter barley harvest.  Now it is in the middle of the harvest, waiting for some dry weather to get out there and finish combining.  There is quite a bit of straw in the fields now, most of it in big round or the huge square bales.  I am guessing that as much of it as possible will be put under cover, because if the forage yields are low, there will be buyers looking to feed that straw.  They say that the Spring barley will be next to harvest.  Certain varieties of barley will be bought by malters who will prepare it for fermentation by brewers or distillers.  Other barleys will be used for roasting to go into the several stouts that Ireland is famous for (like Guinness), roasted barley gives it the black color and the roasted taste.  Then quite a bit of the barley will be fed to livestock, either dried, or maybe treated with proprionic acid for putting into a bunker silo. 

Topics of discussion amongst the 40 advisors were:  How to get the grass to grow?  What to do on a farm with not enough silage.  And cash-flow management.

How to get the grass to grow?  It needs rain, heat, time, fertility, and grass.  There is moisture now, and heat.  The thought was that given some time, if a farmer has fertilized, the grass will grow.  Most of the commercial nitrogen that goes on is Calcium Ammonium Nitrate, which will not be lost by volatilization (like urea can be lost).   A challenge now is the days getting shorter, and farmers are hesitant to make hay or haylage in September because they want some leaf on the grass going into the winter.  Grass stays green through the winter here.  One concern is that people do not over-graze now when forage is tight, but leave a good stubble, so that there is grass there to start regrowing, if there is no green showing, the plant has to start from square one.

What to do on a farm with not enough silage?  Line up feed to buy, or cull some cows or heifers early.  The thought was that with a shortage of feed, it hardly makes sense to keep cull cows around to put more weight on them.  Get rid of them sooner rather than later.

And cash-flow management.  Sit down with the books.  Total up income and expense for the year to date, make some estimates for the rest of the year, and see what it looks like.  Now in the fall is when income taxes for 2012 are due, so farmers will be needing cash to pay that.  And if there are open accounts from feed purchased in the spring- coops are beginning to withhold money from milk checks to pay for feed bought through them, so some milk checks are looking a bit thin now.

Ireland today, 25 July, 2013.

The last two-and-a-half weeks were declared a drought here in Ireland.  There was no rain, and temperatures were up in the 80s.  Hayfields that had been cut were not showing any regrowth, lawns were drying up.  Winter barley was ready for harvest a little ahead of schedule.  Pastures had stopped growing so some dairy farmers were beginning to feed haylage that they had just made a few weeks before.  Towns were running low on water- lower pressure at nights, and warnings to not be watering lawns, washing cars, or filling wading pools.  I saw one tractor with a wagon and a 4 foot poly cube of water, and livestock farmers were beginning to shift to their secondary water supplies. 

Big windrow of late cut hay, County Carlow.

Farmers are making more dry hay this year than they have in years. 

Drought is not a usual problem here in Ireland.   But, even as I am writing this, a little thundershower is brightening people’s moods as some moisture returns.  Today’s paper even has a blight warning for potato growers, as there is likely to be a few days of wet leaves, that would promote late blight on the spuds.  Last night there were scattered showers, folks are hoping for a good rain!

Winter barley harvest begins, Teagasc Oak Park, Ireland

The grain harvest has begun.  Here is a photo of winter barley trials being harvested at the Teagasc Oak Park center.

About Ireland.

Ireland is about the size of Maine, or about three times the size of Vermont.

The population is about 4.5 million in the Republic of Ireland (26 counties).  With Dublin, the capital having about 1.1 million people in the city limits.  Cork is the second largest city in the Republic, with just under 200,000.  Northern Ireland has about 1.8 million people.  (6 counties, part of Great Britain, Scotland is another part of Great Britain).  Belfast is the largest city in the north, with 278,000 people.  So, all together, there are 6.3 million people on this island.  This is roughly the population of Tennessee.  Or about 10 times the population of Vermont.

So, if the area is 3 times the size of Vermont, and it has 10 times the population, it is more densely populated than Vermont.  And yes it is.  Dublin is a big city, with lots of people packed in there.  But, there is a lot of open land, a lot of farm land, and back roads with not too many houses on them.  Plus there is mountainous territory and bog that don’t have anybody living there.

Vermont is roughly 80% forested, and Ireland is 10-15% forested.  Ireland had been mostly forest, then the forests were cut.  Oak went into British ships, cathedrals, and barrels.  Now there have been European Union programs to pay land owners to plant both softwood and hardwood trees and to maintain the plantations.  Softwoods like Douglas Fir, and hardwoods like ash and beech.  Thinnings from these forests are used for fuel, and they use or sell the lumber.  A friend has been thinning his ash, and figures he has enough wood in a shed to last for 5 years or so!

A first look at Irish farms.

Ireland.  In 2010, the census counted just about 140,000 farms, with an average farm size of 81 acres.  More than half the farms had beef animals.  About 11% of the farms had dairy cows.  About 11% had a mix of livestock, like dairy and sheep or dairy and beef.  About 5% of the farms had hay and another crop- maybe barley or wheat.  And another 5% had just grain. 

In the US in 2007, the census counted 2.2 million farms, with an average size of 418 acres.  Over a third of the farms had beef animals.  Just under a quarter of the farms had grain.  Twenty percent had hay and other crops, and only 3% of the farms had dairy cattle.

In Vermont in 2007, the census counted 6,900 farms.  Over a quarter had beef cattle.  Just under 20% had dairy cattle.  Only 3% had grain, mostly corn.  And 44% had hay or another crop.

More next week!

University of Vermont Farm Business Management Specialist Dennis Kauppila is working and researching in Ireland from July to December 2013. We will be highlighting his work in Ireland for the next several months. Here is his first post:

Ireland today, July 12, is having a heat wave like they have not seen in 7 years.  Yesterday’s high temperatures were nearly 90 ° F, very close to the record high in the past 30 years. 

Quite a bit different from a month ago, when the Irish government was helping to pay shipping costs to import hay and wrapped round bales from Britain and France to feed livestock.  This was a very wet, cold spring.  And it followed a wet year in 2012, so forage inventories on farms were very low.  Farmers were feeding anything they could- including straw and expensive grain rations. 

Many Irish dairy farmers are seasonal producers, drying off the herd before Christmas.  Then the herd starts freshening around the beginning of March.  So in 2013, cows were calving, and getting ready to make some milk, but on most farms, there was not enough feed.  In June, the weather came around, the grass started to grow, and cows began milking.  And haying got started.  There is still concern about the coming winter’s forage supply- will there be enough?  There was a Feed Inventory day just recently, and another one coming up in the fall, when all farmers are encouraged to measure and count what they have, in order to know they have.

I am here on a 6-month sabbatical study leave, with farm financial advisors at Teagasc, Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority.  This is very similar to our land grant college system in the US.  The plaque at the front door of Teagasc Headquarters reads, “1958 In gratitude to the government and people of the United States of America whose generosity enabled An Foras Taluntas to be founded.”  It Marshall Fund money that funded this, helping to rebuild Europe after WWII.  (Teagasc began in 1987 or so, when An Foras Taluntas (research) combined with extension advisory and ag college education.)

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend an ‘open day’ at Moorepark, Teagasc’s main dairy research center.  It was called “Irish Dairying, harvesting the potential.”  They estimate that over 8,000 people attended this day-long free event.  It was spread out over nearly 50 acres.   There were 6 main stands at the beginning, with posters and microphones.  There were up to about 50 people in a group, and each group moved from stand to stand, with about 10-15 minutes of talk from researchers at each stand.  These stands included: 

1. Positioning the dairy farm for expansion (after quota is gone);
2. Resilient farming systems for an expanding Irish dairy industry-
3. Growing more grass (for pasture and hay-haylage)
4. EBI to fuel expansion (dairy genetics)
5. Requirements to achieve 90% calving rate in 6 weeks (concentrated breeding to get concentrated calving- needed for a seasonal herd)
6. Achieving a healthy herd (cattle diseases- like IBR and…

Then there was a walk by 10 paddocks to calibrate the eyeballs for measuring the amount of grass in a pasture after grazing.  And then 6 ‘villages,’ each with 8-10 posters and a talk that you could listen to or not.  The ‘villages’ were:  Grassland, Financial Planning, Genetics and Repro, High Quality Milk, New Entrants and Expansion, and Sustainabilty.  Then there tents for Industry partners, Research to adoption, Adding value to milk.  Plus there were tours of the milking barn, and the pig production facility.  Teagasc staff were well pleased with the day, and farmers’ spirits were quite high:  finally seeing the sun and having a good portion of their first cut grass harvested after a miserable wet, cold, late spring.