Christmas 2024 will be a much cherished time for family and friends on the Co. Laois tillage farm of Bobby Miller.
The Irish Grain Growers’ Group (IGGG) chair sees the festive season as an opportunity to help out more around the house, while also thanking the many people who were always on hand at those peak times throughout the farming year now ending.
“Field work has now come to a halt. The weeks ahead will provide an opportunity to plan for 2025.
“In practical terms, this means getting all the soil sampling for the farm up to date. Based on the results that can come back, I can then draw up a nutrient management plan for 2025,” he said.
Christmas
The IGGG chair will use the opportunity presented over the coming weeks to get repair work carried out around his yard and getting his machinery serviced.
“This is the first time in many years that we gave no livestock on the farm. This fact alone will give me plenty of time to put in place a development plan for the business, which can be implemented during the year ahead,” Miller added.
All the winter crops on the Miller farm are looking very well at the present time. The only issue of note is the grazing damage caused to oilseed rape crops by pigeons.
But it’s far from the end of the world.
“The crops that have been affected will recover next spring. It will just take a little bit of extra fertiliser to get them back on track,” according to Miller.
Meanwhile, IGGG has a busy schedule of events in the pipeline for January 2025.
“We will be hosting five regional meetings plus our 2025 annual meeting.
“IGGG continues to grow. We are the only organisation that is committed to exclusively represent the needs of Irish tillage farmers.
“The drive to expand our membership continues apace,” the chair continued.
The coming weeks should also see the establishment of a new Irish government.
Miller is keen that the new administration will reflect the commitments made to the tillage sector by individual political parties in the run up to the recent general election.
Chief among these is the pledge to commit an additional €60 million per annum to the tillage sector over the coming years.
IGGG also views the issue of basic payment convergence as a critically important matter that must be addressed at national level over the coming years.