A milk churn, buried four decades ago as a time capsule, was opened today (Thursday, August 28) at a special ceremony in Dublin.

Containing various materials about Ireland's agri-food and farming landscape in the 1980s, the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland opened the churn which offered a glimpse of the key issues and challenges that faced the sector at the time, and showed interesting comparisons to farming in Ireland today.

The milk churn was opened by publisher David Markey, former journalist and PR consultant Michael Miley, and Michael Patten formerly of Glanbia, at an event at the RDS.

According to Markey, a group came together in the late 1980s with the idea of burying the time capsule, filled with documentation of topical news of the time.

Ideas such as this were quite common at the time, given there was very little by way of technology for archival purposes, Markey commented.

Prices, weather, and EU policy were all hot topics for farmers in 1988, as contents of the time capsule showed.

Although many things have changed significantly in the last four decades like smartphones and digital and social media which were not in existence back then as means of news- and story-telling, there are many issues and concerns that remain similar for Irish farmers.

Along with newspaper clippings and tapes of radio and TV coverage from the time from both mainstream and farming media, contained in the time capsule were also a range of letters from farm leaders, and newsletters and guides from farm organisations.

Farm outlook reports and a 1987 national farm survey emerged from the capsule, which showed largely static output from dairy at the time.

In contrast, there was some growth in beef output and a large growth in output of sheep - with sheep numbers approximately doubling in Ireland between 1980 and 1988, according to Michael Miley.

He remarked that in 1975, the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme was introduced.

There were a number of key events occurring at the time that the media reports contained in the time capsule focused on.

The milk quota regime came in just four years before the time capsule was buried in 1988, which had a profound impact on the dairy sector, putting constraints on milk production and herd sizes.

In 1988, there were around 60,000 dairy farmers in Ireland, compared to around 17,000 now, 10 years on from milk quota abolishment.

Michael Patten said that in 1988, a big story was the advent of the dairy PLCs, with some dairy co-ops taking the PLC route as they faced challenging times trying to invest and expand as a result of the milk quota.

Michael O'Kennedy was Ireland's Minister for Agriculture, while Charles Haughey was Taoiseach, in 1988.

Contained in the capsule was a guide for farmers on what EU membership means for them, then the European Economic Area, as Ireland joined in the decade prior.

Some other finds in the capsule reiterated how advanced technology is for farmers now compared to decades ago, with Michael Patten remarking that around that time in the 1980s, precision agriculture, GPS, first emerged in the US.