Ragwort? Isn't that the big, chunky yellow weed about which so many warnings used to be issued? Wasn't it about ragwort that the local garda in the distant past used to cycle around, visiting farms where it hadn't been eradicated? A serious business. You are reminded of all this on a journey to and from the far West. Acres of the stuff, it seems. One comment was: "I thought that was a field of rape seed oil, it was so yellow. But it was just ragwort."
Is ragwort now OK? Does it not matter in the new farming? Then you come across a paragraph in an English magazine: "A team of 16 students has spent a month pulling up ragwort by hand in 18,000 hectares of the New Forest. The plant, which is irresistible and highly poisonous to cattle and horses, thrives on the low fertility soils in the New Forest. Mowing is ineffective, as the animals find the weed even tastier when cut."
So how goes it with ragwort in this jurisdiction in the year 1996? A query to the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry brings this straightfaced response. It is headed simply REPLY. This is the text. "Ragwort continues to be scheduled as a noxious weed under the Noxious Weeds Act 1936. It is a highly poisonous plant containing alkaloids which can cause serious damage to the liver of farm animals. Its toxins are not destroyed by drying. The Noxious Weeds Act was designed and has been operated to deal with weeds which have a direct and significant adverse effect on the production of farm animals or crops. The Act was successful and by the 1960s prosecutions had dropped to insignificant levels. Over the past 15 years the reorganisation of the Garda Service and the increase in more direct police work has meant that the Gardai have withdrawn from active noxious weed enforcement.
"There have been no prosecutions under the Act in the last five years. Modern farming has reached a level of specialisation at which weed control is a fundamental and automatic element in good farm practice.
The department and the advisory services of Teagasc continue to issue information leaflets on the control of noxious weeds and in the course of normal contacts with farmers, advice on weed control where appropriate."