It's nice to be incentivized for something you'd be doing anyway. Like when I was sent on a chainsaw use and maintenance course as a brand-new member of the Irish Timber Growers' Association and came away with safety chaps, helmet, gloves and boots and a cheque for £178 from Social Welfare for taking a week off from "productive investments" on the farrrm. It is, so, a farm . . . with a herd number for the 15 sheep, and finely-coloured informative satellite maps of each field on-line at the Dept Ag in Dublin. We don't need to make money from the farm - which serves other purposes for us, like raising a brace of honest, can-do, effective humans to adulthood.
The idea of incentives is based on a certainty that particular policy is good for the polity. As a tax-payer, as well as a recipient of some of the gumment's largesse, I'd like to think that Agricultural policy decisions are evidence based rather than an idea cooked up in an office in Dublin and not subject to peer-review. We used to know an Nth-generation sheep-raising family from County Wicklow. In the 1960s, they had been encouraged by a man from the ministry to knock down all the 19thC stone out-buildings and replace them with modern, space-efficient, galvanised steel hay-barns. They sort of knew where all cut-stone lintels and sills were buried but were not (yet) cash-strapped enough to dig them up and sell on to architectural salvage.
From about the same Big Ag in Ireland began its love-affair with Lolium perenne ; Seagalach buan ; perennial rye-grass. Careful research from back then established that cattle fed on rye-grass delivered more meat and/or more milk than any other diet in the study. I guess there were parallel experiments proving that a ryegrass monoculture yielded more tonnes per hectare than anything else available /imaginable. Especially in a world where unlimited cheap nitrogen was availble in pellets. In the Animal Farm mentality of the time, if ryegrass is good, everything else must be bad and herbicidal sprays were developed to kill all the 'weeds' or at least all the dicots: chekkitout 2,4-D aka 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid which was one of the components of Agent Orange. And we know how well that cunning plan worked out?
Two generations of family farms have been told (resistance in useless) that monoculture Lolium perenne is the only way forward; the only way to be financially viable for the next two generations. In the last five years, there has been a complete volte face, and Joe and Josie Farmer can now get extra money for leaving their hay meadows uncut for an anxiety-inducing long time. 'tis a rare farmer who saves, like, actual, hay nowadays. Hay needs a whole family and the neighbours as well; not to mention a predictable week ahead of dry settled weather. Silage otoh needs a single effective to operate in sequence a mower, a baler and a polythene wrapper.
But for us, this is Our Scheme: leaving the meadows uncut between 15-Apr and 01-Jul generates €50/ha a spectacular vista of wild flowers; best viewed on your knees. Dactylorhiza maculata the heath spotted orchid [2023] is only the bonus cherry on the cake of colour. Last year, our Ag Advisor was delirah to find so many of the positive indicator species so abundant that he could tick enough of the boxes on the checklist to ensure that we got maximum payment . . . for that small part of the €quation.
It seems that we have become Best In Valley for Trad Hay Meadow and on the 1st Thursday in June we were volunteered to host a KTG Knowledge Transfer Group meeting to show our neighbours how it can be done. Fair enough, happy to help. It caused a mild frisson of anxiety when I gathered at short notice that, as well as a table for the paper-work and 20ish seats to listen to the technical introduction, I should also provide tea (and cake, or at least biscuits). The picture above shows 20 bemused farmers aged 30 to 80 standing in a field up to their knees in 'dirt' [technical term] and being told with a straight face and earnest delivery that hay-rattle Rhinanthus minor gliográn, sheep sorrel Rumex acetosella Samhadh caorach, and stitchwort Stellaria graminea tursarraing bheag were highly desirable harbingers of healthy stock and deliverers of micro-nutrients.
Additional irony: in order to access this field everyone had walked past and ignored the TRADITIONAL HAY MEADOW PLEASE KEEP TO LEFT FIELD EDGE sign, the back of which can be seen in the top right corner of the picture.
When the midges got insupportable, everyone trooped back to the yard for tea and cake. I believe this was the 1st of 10 KTG meetings, for which all regular participants can claim a PPD personal professional development payment. Bob's Famous Flapjacks and a rather nice brack with cherries, sultanas and marzipan cubes were much appreciated. Hopefully the exercise will induce some of these strong silent farmers to discover their inner chef, rather than buying two packets of Marietta biscuits for company as usual.
refs: The official guide to indicator species
