By 2015: it is predicted that numbers will decline to about 70,000 families seriously engaged in farming.

Economy: agriculture accounts for about one-third of net foreign earnings

Training offered by: Teagasc, Farm Apprenticeship Board, UCD and Post Leaving Cert colleges

Going green: Mellows College, Athenry, Co Galway, is to convert 160 acres to full organic status and will discontinue conventional agricultural training there by the end of the year.

Perception: "Farming is no longer the sexy occupation it once was. People have a perception of farmers as backward and negative." Mr TJ Maher, president of Macra na Feirme.

He always wanted to be a farmer, from as far back as he can remember. "It was in our blood," says William Kingston, a 29-year-old farmer in west Cork. "We'd always have helped, we came home in the evening after school and fed the cattle or whatever had to be done." Now he runs the farm and he can't think of a better, more satisfying occupation.

"Farming is as good as you make it. There's huge potential in farming if the attitude is right. It is not a bad lifestyle. It's as hard as you make it. People have a lot of concepts or notions about farming that are wrong." To many it may sound idyllic, but this is Kingston's job. He's up at 7 a.m., out the kitchen door and down the road in the dew to bring the cows home for milking. His 300-acre farm is just outside Skibbereen, Co Cork, in a place called Tureen.

Do his thoughts turn philosophical at this time of the day? No, he laughs. "You're more interested in getting the cows back in the morning." The milking takes just over an hour and then it's in to breakfast. "We don't go all day without food, it hasn't got that tough yet," he jokes. It can be fairly busy "depending on the time of the year". The busiest time is just coming to an end when the calves are born and have to be reared. "We sell some and keep about 100 every year." This is a dairy farm.

"Okay, it's hard work, but it's down to organisation. It can be a good life. You can work seven days a week and no one is going to thank you for it. The good thing is you control your own destiny. If you do something better, you will be rewarded for it. "

His father retired five years ago and he took over the farm. At school in St Facthna's De La Salle in Skibbereen he liked physics, the science subjects in general and history. He never presumed that he would work on the farm. His three older sisters are teachers and he has one brother who is a doctor and another who is an engineer. He's never felt he's missed out on university life.

"I have as good a social life as anyone," he says. He also mentions the importance of Macra na Feirme to young farmers. Today, he has an apprentice farmer working with him, and he has just overseen the completion of a new milking parlour on his farm.

"There's so much negative talk about farming, you'd wonder - but in some circles you have those who are never happy about farming."

Kingston didn't start work on his father's farm immediately after finishing his Leaving Certificate in 1988 and he advises anyone "not to be in any rush", but to "get as much experience and education as possible" before they return home. "That's vital," he says. "Too many people rush back to the farm. Your focus is really too narrow then. And then at 24 you get fed up."

He went to the Teagasc-run Clonakilty Agricultural College, Co Cork, to complete a year's certificate course in agriculture. There were 80 in the class, including about six female students. He was the top student in his year.

Then over three years he worked as an apprentice farmer under the Farm Apprenticeship Board scheme, spending a year on three different farms. "It really set me up. I couldn't praise that highly enough. You see different enterprises and get to know the way people think and you get the confidence to come home and do it yourself, which is the most important thing."

As far as Kingston is concerned, the key to being a successful farmer is in having the right attitude. For those people who feel "they have to do it, or the people who don't want to go into farming - they feel they are wasted in farming, that is totally the wrong attitude", he says.

"The biggest negative in farming is that good farmers can't get bigger milk quotas," he says.