THIS FARMING LIFE:In the last of a our three-part series, KATHY SHERIDANhears from some pioneering farmers who have moved beyond traditional farming, into restaurants and bio-energy crops
WHEN FARMERS complain, the response can be glib. Give up your aul subsidies. Diversify. Sell up. “But if every farmer sold up, who would produce the food?” asks Tom Turley, an east Galway farmer whose wife runs a greengrocers shop in Nenagh, Co Tipperary. He wonders if the critics fully understand the 24/7 commitment of food production.
“I see the people who finish work at five on a Friday evening and it’s ‘hooray I’m out of here’, they have a big weekend and it’s Wednesday by the time they’re thawed out. It’s very funny – unless you’re the boss. During the Celtic Tiger, we went through 16 young fellows in the shop in one summer. Paddy didn’t want to work but he wanted the money.” And he wonders, too, if they fully understand the importance of food security.
Dr Cathal O’Donoghue of Teagasc agrees. “We take our food supply for granted but it’s really on a knife edge. It’s such a risky business – weather, volatility, famines, price spikes. Left to itself, you’d have few takers [to produce it].”
But we have short memories, he reckons. “The farm subsidies system was set up in Europe after food shortages in the second World War, to ensure enough food for the populations.
“The same was done in the US. The result is that developed countries have avoided food shortages. In 2008, you saw droughts in Australia, more land in Latin America being taken out for bio-fuel. In 2010, you had Russia stopping exports of grain. If you have a shock, you run into global shortages.”
He produces a graphic showing how food-price spikes for maize, wheat, and rice correlated almost precisely with incidences of riots and civil unrest in the year from July 2007.
Meanwhile in Ireland, in an effort to take back some control from weather, soaring input costs and world food prices, a group of farmers in the southeast have been turning hundreds of acres over from food production into renewable bio-energy crops – and not without pain.
In 2006, at the height of the boom, 30 tillage farmers in Co Wexford were staring into the abyss. “Grain prices were rock bottom. The beet industry was gone. Sheep – you couldn’t give them away,” says Andrew Byrne. So they decided to diversify.
In farming circles, the buzz was all about bio-energy.
After investigating farms in England, Sweden and Germany, they decided on miscanthus, or elephant grass. The selling spiel was fabulous (literally). "We were told it would yield 10 ton an acre at €60 a ton. That was €300 an acre net, compared to grain that was doing little better than breaking even," Byrne says. Inputs would be a swingeing €1,000 an acre but once planted, here was a crop that would go on renewing itself for 20 years, requiring no fertiliser, no drying, no cost beyond the annual harvesting operation.
Each of the 30 farmers invested between €15,000 and €20,000 to cover around 300 acres. The first problem was with the planting machine, on loan from England. “It was a disaster,” says Byrne, entailing huge gaps in coverage and costing serious money to remedy. Half the investment was lost in the first year. Byrne can’t get away from the notion that the salespeople had been somewhat economical with the truth. “I suppose they were telling us what we wanted to hear.”
But the group was committed by now. A corn drill for precision planting was engineered by Paddy Nolan and they started again.
However, they never anticipated the next hurdle. Under an agreement, the crop was to be sold to the Bord na Móna power station in Edenderry. That collapsed amid disputes over which party should benefit from the so-called Refit (Renewable Energy Feed in Tariffs).
The farmers’ expectation was that it would be paid to the board, who would pass it on to the growers. Bord na Móna thought otherwise. The deal was off. At €40-€50 a ton, the tariff was a vital part of the farmers’ business plan. Several years on, however, no tariff has been established and, says Byrne, there’s no assurance from Bord na Móna that it will pass it on if it does get it.
“So now we had the crop and nowhere to bring it,” Byrne says. That’s when they started looking at briquettes made of elephant grass, for use in open fires.
Wexgen – a green energy company based near Enniscorthy – was engaged to process and market the product. Four years on from that first planting, with more painful experimenting with the fuel mix tests by Waterford Institute of Technology’s forestry division, they’re now into their second briquette season. “We’re happy with it now,” says Byrne. “Last year there hadn’t been enough testing. This year, we’re adding 50 per cent recycled timber and it’s working well.”
Under Wexgen's sales and marketing manager, Laurene Dryden, Greenflame briquettes are getting space in major outlets such as Supervalu/Centra, Woodie's DIY, Londis and Gala, as well as being exported to the UK to supplement another brand. The little tubes of miscanthus/timber come in a neat portable package with the legend "From farm to fireplace", and the price is comparable with peat products. The group has grown to 35 shareholders now, along with an additional 30 growers, covering 650 acres with miscanthusall the way up to Enniskerry.
So, success finally? Byrne – whose default expression probably is rueful – can only be honest. “The yields just aren’t there. Five to six ton an acre is the best of it.” It’s a long way from the 10 ton an acre of the sales spiel. Byrne reckons the net margin is €200 an acre – €100 less than for feeding barley.
“The guys were sort of pioneers,” says Dryden, a positive woman. “A lot got out of it.” Byrne nods his head. “I’m disappointed,” he says firmly. But it’s there now, for 20 years. “Going forward, the price should rise and if the Refit tariff finally comes in, that would change the picture. But what’s the chance that Bord na Móna will pass it on? They have to substitute 30 per cent of fossil fuel with biomass by 2015 but their attitude is, ‘if you don’t supply us, we’ll import it’. How green is that?”
In Co Wicklow, Tom Shortt, a large-scale grain grower, has continued to expand his acreage of oil seed rape, a crop extensively used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. “Really, we got into it because we weren’t being paid properly to continue to produce food because world food prices were so low. It’s a knee-jerk reaction from the farming community. Energy crops are seen to be an alternative – but with mixed results.” Rape seed is now about 12 per cent of Shortt’s total planting.
This crop pays, though the same old problem raises its head. Promised tax reliefs haven’t materialised. “It’s not economic to use the oil in any vehicles in Ireland without a reduction in excise relief, so I have an alternative – I can put it on the boat to Germany. Fertiliser and oil – two of the biggest imports to this country – are being used to turn it right around and out again.
After crushing in Germany, two thirds of it is left in the form of protein cake, which of course also ends up in Germany, then we import a million tons of protein additives,” he says in exasperated tones.
“In the meantime, six small crushing plants that I know of for rape seed in Ireland are all lying idle. There are jobs in this – sustainable jobs. It’s the only crop that could come anywhere close to beet for me. The gross margin is 10 per cent better – plus on rotation, it’s good for the soil.”
Series concludes
