Tommy Holmes’ walk in Mayo last week marked the end of the Teagasc/Irish Farmers Journal BETTER farm beef challenge walks for 2019.

Over the course of the year, there was a total of six events. Maurice Hearne in Waterford and Ricky Milligan in Kildare set the ball rolling in early April with a very topical spring series.

Our two national open days in July were hosted by Wesley Browne and Joe and Harry Lalor on their respective farms in counties Monaghan and Laois.

To close off the year, two autumn walks took place last week, hitting the Flaherty family farm in Kerry on Tuesday and moving north-west to Tommy Holmes’ farm on Thursday. Both events were well attended and featured some very topical discussions.

Finances and markets

The first stand at each walk detailed the farm system, the physical and financial performance of the farm to-date and what the projected performance is for the end of 2021, five years after joining the programme.

There were a few common trends on both farms, in particular, significantly increased variable costs in 2018.

While both farmers agreed that 2018 was a difficult year, it was the future projections that were most concerning.

BETTER farm advisers John Greaney and Tommy Cox both highlighted that at current beef prices, the target gross margins for the next three years would not be achievable.

They said the plans were drawn up in 2017 using a conservative beef price of €3.80/kg.

Prices are well below this now, and it will not be possible to hit the targets. They also pointed out that the harsh reality is, as Teagasc figures have shown recently, no system can be profitable with beef at €3.50/kg.

“With beef prices and the crisis we are in at the moment, the biggest factor that is going to either keep a person in business or make them go broke is producing as many kilos of beef as you possibly can off grass and milk.” John Flaherty said.

The Flahertys are placing huge emphasis on breeding and grassland management. With a similar attitude in Mayo, Tommy Holmes said he would be trying to respond to the markets and get more bulls for slaughter under 16 months, as opposed to his traditional 20 month system.

What they said

“There are three things old grass won’t do. It won’t grow in the shoulders of the year, it won’t put weight on cattle and in terms of buying bagged manure, you’d be as well throwing the money into the river.”

– Tommy Holmes, host farmer.

“To be realistic about it, weighing is the only way you are ever going to be able to judge the ability of your cow. The dairy man can see the milk in the tank straight away, but for the suckler farmer, weighing is the only way to determine the ability, or lack of it, in a cow.”

– John Flaherty, host farmer.

“For me, the only way to get the perfect calf and weanling for my finishing system is to use AI.”

– James Flaherty, host farmer.

“Putting the money aside, it is a pity after going to all the trouble to weigh cows and calves for BEEP or filling out data for BDGP that farmers don’t actually use this freely available information to make better breeding and management decisions.”

– Jimmy Lyons, Teagasc.

“With margins tight, a simple and cheap thing like buying a reel and pigtail posts is a great option to reduce costs and improve your grassland management.”

– Eugene O’Doherty, Teagasc.

“Reseeding isn’t necessarily for every farm or every field. Just because your neighbour might do it, doesn’t mean you need to. If your stocking rate is increasing, then yes, you need to grow more grass and reseeding is one way of doing that. If there is not a lot of perennial ryegrass, then that’s another reason.”

– Michael O’Leary, PastureBase.

“Tommy was growing 15t DM/ha/year of grass, but at the same time, his gross margin was low and his variable costs were debilitating. To improve his margin and dilute costs, we had to get more heads of cattle through the gate each year and his grass growing capabilities have allowed this.”

– Tommy Cox, Teagasc.

“Measuring is everything. Whether it’s weighing, faecal sampling or taking soil samples – if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

– John Greaney, Teagasc.

“Before the programme, it was a long time before I spread lime. This is limestone land and I had it in my head that it didn’t need much lime. I was wrong. All ground is getting 2.5t/ac of lime at reseeding.”

– Tommy Holmes, host farmer.