Opinion

We culled our herd and planted Sitka spruce. Why am I still the bad guy?

I did it because there was no viable financial future for us as a small-scale beef farm

Sitka spruce in Co Leitrim
Sitka spruce in Co Leitrim
Andrea Francis
Thu Jul 28 2022 - 15:51

I’m not your typical forester-farmer. I’m a 33-year-old female tech worker who married a beef farmer during the pandemic. The farm was increasingly in debt when we met six years ago, margins on beef were non-existent and, as time marched on, basic input costs such as fertiliser, veterinary and electricity rose sharply. My salary kept us afloat. I qualified as a farmer in the meantime, and took over the administration of the farm so my husband could work off-farm full time.

We took the hard and life-changing decision to cull the beef herd, and planted about 39 acres with 85 per cent Sitka and 15 per cent native deciduous trees. We leased the remainder. This is an irreversible change of use of the land. We used a private forestry company as we didn’t have the machinery and manpower to do it ourselves.

For the first 15 years, we will gets a modest annual grant, and the forestry company gets a substantial grant. They take care of planting and reviewing the forest, including installing sturdy fencing along the boundary. Assuming the forest doesn’t fall prey to disease or fire damage, the Sitka trees are “thinned” at 15 years old — the poorest performing trees are cut and sold, allowing the best performing Sitka trees to grow a further 15 years and then be ready for use in the construction sector. The first five years are the most delicate, ensuring the seedlings take hold.

[ Una Mullally: Sitka spruce dominates Irish ‘forests’ — this is both wrong and dangerous ]

At this time of year, we would normally be spreading thousands of litres of pesticides to kill the endemic dock leaves, ragwort and furze bushes that plague our farm. Our cattle would be getting impregnated for next spring’s calving, contributing to a larger national herd size and, therefore, greenhouse emissions. Instead, the land is just being allowed to thrive naturally and wild alongside our tree seedlings.

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We made our decision because we couldn’t keep up with the amount of work it takes to farm more than 100 acres for no profit, even with the financial support of the BPS (Basic Payment Scheme). If land isn’t “actively farmed” the farmer gets penalised in their annual BPS. It was exhausting constantly worrying about what to do, because land maintenance costs money and time, whether you make a profit or not. It took a heavy toll on our mental health.

Some high-earning, high-output farmers have bought up land in Leitrim and the like and planted it for extra income (and the nitrates derogation) — but the vast majority of farmers turning to forestry, people like us, are simply desperate to have their poor-quality land make some kind of income without damaging the environment. Breaking even would be a relief for many. There’s a good reason why beef smallholding owner-farmers have full-time jobs outside of the farm. So why the resistance to change? Because once a forest is planted, there’s no going back. Fear and tradition run deep, no matter the data, no matter the plea for children’s futures.

I consider forestry to be a crop with a useful product output at the end. Shouldn’t Ireland strive to be self-sufficient in timber production, rather than contribute to the environmental impact of importing it (the classic “outsourcing our problems”)? Yes, Sitka is more flammable but it also grows extremely fast. We need more houses to be built, ergo we need more timber. And construction costs need no more reason to rise further. Forest fires are a risk but not a certainty.

But despite commissioning extensive, thorough archaeological and environmental examinations and reports through the forestry company, and adapting the plantation to meet the recommendations, the whole thing cost us more than we could imagine, personally and financially.

Our forest is now eight months old, and it’s quite thrilling to watch it establish itself. Of course, you can’t see it right now. All the fields that got planted are now shoulder high in wildflowers and grass growing freely, the internal hedgerows are flourishing, and at ground level a trained eye can see the little seedling trees firmly taking root. The air is thick with insects, birds are flitting around, and I can see fresh deer spoor, which lets me know that wildlife now flourishes in fields where they never could before.

But I am still the bad guy because I planted Sitka spruce in the Irish countryside. I did it because I believed there was no viable financial future for us as a small-scale beef farm, regardless of the quality of the product. I did it because I believed planting trees was a good thing. I did it because this was the mix the investors wanted in terms of sales and returns in 15 and 30 years. I did it because I feared not having a pension in 30 years, and this idea is sold on the premise that the forest will mature just in time for us to hit 70 years old and make some meaningful retirement money.

Short of slapping compulsory purchase orders on smallholdings and forcing the owners — of all ages — into new trades via free education and qualifications, I don’t see how emissions targets in the agriculture sector (whether conservative or ambitious) will be met. We were lucky. I had another career, and my husband was willing and able to go back to education.

To ask a beef farmer to reduce their herd means for many that beef farming will be akin to a hobby, and not a meaningful occupation contributing to a big export industry. It most definitely will mean that the farm finances will take a big hit. Are these farmers to be “custodians of the land”, paid to maintain it but never to touch livestock again? Is farmland to become a public resource, managed by a State-owned entity akin to Coillte? Will our politicians and lobbyists stop dancing around the issue and actually tell us — what is the plan?

Andrea Francis is a farmer