Teagasc count the cost of a difficult 2018

DATA collected by Teagasc from almost 900 farms across the country in 2018 has confirmed the difficulties most farming enterprises faced last year due mainly to the combination of different weather extremes.

The Teagasc Farm Enterprise Factsheets outline the output, costs and profit margins for a range of farming systems across the country, representative of almost 93,000 farms nationally.

For dairy, beef and lamb enterprises in 2018, the story was much the same for everyone with a significant reduction in margins due to a spike in spending on feed from concentrates to the purchase of forage.

According to Dr. Kevin Hanrahan, Head of the Teagasc Rural Economy Development Programme, the difficult weather conditions in 2018 ‘led to lower technical performances on grassland farms’.

Dairy enterprises underwent a substantial rise in in milk production costs due to the difficult weather conditions during the Spring and Summer.

The dairy farmers spent more than 40% extra on concentrates in 2018 but they also had a 21% increase in spending on forage with scarce supplies leading to an increase in the price paid for silage.

The Teagasc report also notes that the ‘average dairy farm’ had a herd size of 79 cows in 2018, recording a net margin of €1,133 per hectare, a decline of 35% on the 2017 level.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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