Teagasc Advisers Win Travel Bursaries

19 April 2004

Four members of the Teagasc advisory staff will travel to Europe, Australia and New Zealand over the coming months to learn about new opportunities for Irish farming.

The annual travel bursaries, which are sponsored by the Farming Independent, enable front-line advisers and specialists to examine technologies and methods of benefit to Irish agriculture. The following four successful applicants will be reporting on their experiences in the Farming Independent later in the year.

• Ann Chapman, Co-ordinator of the Teagasc Planning Post Fischler programme in Longford receives her award for a proposal to study the role of women on family farms in Southern Australia. This is a particularly timely study following huge interest in the Croke Park conference on the Role of Women in Irish Agriculture. Australian farm women were present at the conference and Ann is proposing to examine the evolving role of Australian farm women and what’s being done there that could be replicated here.

• Tom Fallon, Dairy Adviser with Teagasc in Waterford receives an award for his proposal to study Nutrient Management Planning in Denmark. This topic is of particular significance at present as Denmark is the first EU country to implement the Nitrates Directive and have been implementing nutrient management planning on a countrywide basis since the early nineties. As a result, Denmark has received a derogation for individual farmers to operate at a level of 230kg of organic nitrogen per hectare.

• Michael McHugh, Drystock Adviser,Teagasc Monaghan, receives his award for his proposal to examine sheep breed improvement programmes in New Zealand. Despite the best efforts of the Irish Pedigree Sheep Breed Improvement Programme, less than 16% of pedigree breeders are participating in the scheme and National output per ewe has remained static at just under 1.3 lambs per ewe for the last 15 years. In contrast, New Zealand farmers have participated to a much greater extent in breed improvement schemes and output has increased significantly. Michael is aiming to discover why the New Zealand schemes have been more successful than ours and what lessons can be learned.

• Vivian Silke, Drystock Adviserwith Teagasc in Clare, receives his award for his proposal to examine quality beef production in Scotland. The Scottish beef industry is world renowned for the quality of its product with 76% of Scottish beef being sold through UK retail outlets as a premium product. Irish beef producers will need to focus more on the requirements of the market place in the post-decoupling era. Vivian is proposing to talk to farmers, processing plants as well as research and advisory personnel in order to discover the factors leading to the success of the beef sector in Scotland.