Prices still remain poor but ‘good week’ will gather the crops

THIS week’s spell of good weather should ‘clean up’ the remaining 2,000 acres of corn to be cut on Galway farms this harvest, according to IFA grain representatives.

The poor summer and low sunshine amounts meant that some crops weren’t fit for harvesting during the window of good weather that presented itself in early September.

John Daly, Galway IFA Grain Committee Chairman, told the Farming Tribune that this week’s good weather was very welcome news for many grain farmers.

“Some crops were that bit later in ripening this year so we estimate that up to last weekend about 20% of the crops in Galway or 2,000 acres still remained to be cut,” said John Daly.

Price though still continues to be the big bugbear for grain farmers with barley at 20% moisture coming in at €141/€142 per tonne.

World surpluses in grain have led to depressed global markets while in Europe, France has an estimated 41 million tonnes of grain held in storage that they want to offload.

“Over the past two to three years, we have a situation whereby the best grain growers can hope for in Ireland is a break-even situation.

“The real worry is that there is only so long that this position can be sustained. While the yields have been very solid this year [c. 3 tonnes per acre], the prices have remained poor again,” said John Daly.

Nationally the IFA have been negotiating with the merchants to try and agree some level of price increase but there seems to be little room for manoeuvre given the world market situation.  Despite the heavy rains of the weekend of September 10 to 14, the crops still remaining to be cut have stood up well to the conditions.

“While we got some heavy rain, we didn’t get the strong winds that could do an awful lot of damage. Price wise it’s been another bad year, but at least this week all the crops should be harvested,” said John Daly.