Grain farmers say their harvest has been a disaster this year after months of wet weather.

Fields of crops are waterlogged and harvesting that should have been finished by now is not completed.

Some farmers are abandoning crops at this stage, saying they are not worth saving.

Tim Sheehan is a commercial tillage farmer in Co Cork, and member of the Irish Gran Growers group.

This morning he took the decision to abandon the harvest of 150 acres of barley near Mallow.

The crop has been flattened, the fields are sodden and all value is lost.

"We're about 3 weeks trying to cut this farm. When we started off it was standing and grounds conditions were a problem so we pulled out to let ground conditions soak. We came back here with two weeks and with all the rainfall the crop is going ear to the ground. I have a 150 acres of crops to harvest and in reality there is nothing to harvest."

Tim estimates the loss of the crop will cost him around €100,000 and it is all down to the weather situation.

"We had rain every second day and we had had 19 inches in July, August and September."

Ironically, these October days are experiencing record warm temperatures too, and that has caused the uncut barley to begin to sprout which adds to the damage.

What is remarkable about the situation is that Tim, in all his years growing grain, has never before left a single acre unharvested.

"I'm farming in my own right 37 years, and I have never lost an acre of grain. We have never failed to cut."

So, does he think the weather is changing, even though a single year does not make a pattern.

"The difference in the weather this year is high temperatures and rainfall at the same time, and it's just muggy, rotting weather.

"We are commercial tillage farmers and we have kept no animals for the last 75 years and this has been the worst we ever come across. Something is happening the weather. This situation isn't normal, having 20 degrees and its raining."

Tim is just one of many farmers dotted around the country still trying to complete the harvest. Most of this year's cutting is complete but 1 to 2% is outstanding.

Where the harvest has been finished, farmers are finding yields per hectare are back. In some cases there is 33% difference with last year, when a record 2.4m tonnes were harvested.

This year the harvest is unlikely to exceed 2 million tonnes.

Recognising the issue, the Department of Agriculture has introduced a support fund for tillage farmers. It will pay them €28 per hectare up to a maximum of 100 hectares.

Tillage farmers say it is nowhere near adequate given the difficult conditions they have had to endure in 2023.

But the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue says that is just one of a number of supports from the Department.

"I have strongly supported the tillage sector throughout 2022 and 2023. I doubled the annual budget for the Protein Aid Scheme from €3m to €7m and the Tillage Incentive Scheme (TIS) resulted in payments of almost €11m to scheme applicants last year. In response to harvest difficulties this year and following on from ensuring that the upgraded annual €10M Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM) became a permanent part of the CAP Strategic Plan (CSP), I also announced €7m in additional funding for SIM to ensure support for all applicants in 2023."

While some tillage farmers continue to deal with the last of this year's harvest, all are also thinking about planting the first of next year's crops.

Normally at this stage of the year 60 to 70% of winter planted crops are already in the ground, but some estimates suggest of 15% of planting has taken place in light of the extremely wet field conditions.

Source - https://www.rte.ie