Ear to the Ground (1993) Season 33 Episode 1

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Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Ear to the Ground.

00:03Another season of farming life and rural living in all their muddy glory.

00:09And what better place to start than right here at the National Dairy Show in Mill Street

00:14where the country's top show cattle and their handlers will be battling it out for top honours.

00:20Later Stephen Robb has a more sobering story.

00:24Could a noxious weed really threaten the livelihoods of tillage farmers around the country?

00:30The problem is there. It's a serious problem so it should be addressed.

00:35And for the season that's in it, Alex Sweeney will be on a farm that's harvesting a whopping 400,000 pumpkins.

00:42I was born on Halloween so pumpkins are part of my blood. I still think this is such a weird sight to see.

01:00Some people are born into farming. Some may inherit land, but others just seem to have it in their DNA.

01:17Like 13-year-old Garoad Long.

01:20From the village of Kilbritton in County Cork, Garoad spends as much spare time as possible working on a local dairy farm.

01:30So how many calves are you looking after, or trying to look after at least?

01:33Uh, over 30 I'd say.

01:36And what are you responsible for?

01:38Bedding, feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding and feeding.

01:41Okay. Garoad's love of farming is a passion mum, Helena, is very happy to encourage.

01:47Well, we've come up here since he's a baby, and he's also come out here when he was age kind of four.

01:53He just wants to be out on the farm all the time, he just loves animals.

01:56He's almost self-sufficient, you just park him down here.

01:58Oh yes, I just park him up here, he's part of the family here as well, so they're very good to him.

02:02How are you doing?

02:02No, I'm fine.

02:04Garoad is no passenger here.

02:06Over time, he's become a reliable farm hand for David O'Sullivan and his wife, Emma.

02:13He always had a bucket in his hand, and he was under the cows, under the calves,

02:17Loving it.

02:18Loving it.

02:19He's an asset like, which is only bringing the cows in for milking, putting the cows out after milking,

02:24feeding the calves is the big one.

02:27Full confidence in Garoad when he goes feeding those calves that he's doing them right like.

02:30David and Emma and their family have always competed at agricultural shows.

02:36That passion has rubbed off on Garoad.

02:39Tomorrow, he'll be showcasing his animal handling skills at the National Dairy Show in Mill Street.

02:45How are you feeling about the show tomorrow?

02:47Excited for it, weighing all year for it.

02:50Yeah, are you nervous?

02:52I suppose, I smell a bit.

02:53Yeah, but are you a little bit confident as well?

02:55Yeah, yeah.

02:56To qualify for the Nationals, Garoad competed in local handling competitions with the same heifer calf.

03:03She's a beaut. Tell me about her.

03:07She was born at the end of November.

03:09OK, what's her name?

03:10We wouldn't really have a name for her, we'd just call her the November calf.

03:1413-year-old Garoad will be competing in the under 16 class as one of the youngest entrants.

03:21What's his chances like tomorrow?

03:22Hopefully, he'll get out of the top ten, but it is an All-Ireland and there is high quality.

03:31He's up against 16-year-olds as well, but he knows his moves, he knows exactly what to do for the judge,

03:38he has it done to a tee.

03:40This morning, Garoad and David are taking the show calf to Mill Street to get her settled in ahead of the big day.

03:47The hope is that it will help her acclimatise to this very busy and noisy environment.

03:54Have you much more work to do?

03:56Not really, just feed her and done for the day.

03:59And keep her as clean and as white as this?

04:01Yeah.

04:01It's the day of the competition and all around, competitors are busy getting their animals show ready,

04:14Garoad included.

04:16So what else do you need to be doing between now and heading into the ring?

04:20Just getting her top line ready. You just go with the brush and hairdryer and you're trying to just

04:25level it her top line. It's longer here and short here, it's trying to just match the same height.

04:31So it looks perfectly level.

04:32Yeah.

04:34The National Dairy Show at Mill Street attracts large crowds from all over the country.

04:39They come to see the pedigree livestock, the exhibitions and of course the competition.

04:45Judge Andrea Rafty will be running her eye over the competitors' handling skills.

04:50What do you look for as a judge?

04:52Someone that's quite cool, calm, collected, very comfortable on the halter.

04:56Someone who always makes her calf look really good.

04:58Is it a disadvantage if you're not from a farm?

05:02You definitely don't need to be from a farm.

05:04For me, all you need is a bit of enthusiasm.

05:06You need work ethic and you just want the willing to learn.

05:14Every movement of Garoad's calf has to be skillfully controlled.

05:17But the lights and noise seem to be affecting her.

05:37Despite the handling challenges, Garoad is still awarded fifth place.

05:45Not bad in such an experienced group.

05:47You just didn't go my way.

05:51She was fighting a little bit with you, yeah?

05:52Yeah.

05:53Yeah.

05:53She was kind of throwing herself around.

05:55She wasn't keeping straight or anything and she's pushing a lot.

05:58Yeah.

05:58Are your arms tired now?

06:00Oh, yeah.

06:03But there's still hope.

06:05Garoad and the runners-up in all the age classes have another chance to qualify for the final.

06:11Garoad and the runners-up in all of them.

06:12However, he'll have to impress a new judge.

06:17This time, things go exactly to plan.

06:20Perfectly right from the start to the end.

06:22Great job.

06:24It's first place.

06:27And into the final.

06:29He's going straight back into the ring for the championship.

06:33So, this is where it gets really interesting and quite serious.

06:37Let's see how he gets on.

06:41Competing against the best handlers here today, Garoad seems to be holding his own.

06:50But the judge, Cord Hormann, who's travelled all the way from Germany for this event,

06:54is the one who needs to be impressed.

07:07Finally, a decision is made.

07:12Thank you so much.

07:13Thank you so much.

07:15Congratulations.

07:20What did you like about your champion handler?

07:23You could really tell that he has a bond to his heifer.

07:26So, he was really showing all that knowledge and professionalism in that presentation that made him champion.

07:32And he was a pretty cool customer out there, wasn't he?

07:34Yeah, absolutely.

07:35Absolutely.

07:36He took it like a champ and he was calm and no, no, I liked it a lot.

07:40Did you feel your heart racing when you were out there and the judge talked to him?

07:44No really, I felt more relaxed because the cab was more relaxed.

07:47She was never in the ring before or anything like that.

07:49Yeah.

07:50What made you stand out, do you think?

07:51I don't know, but she's generally a good cab and I put a lot of work into her and I think that paid off.

07:58For Emma, who's been watching him here all day, it's an unforgettable moment.

08:03The champion, like, it's unbelievable. That's my phone. Sorry, lads.

08:06Yeah.

08:07And it's Helena.

08:09Hello?

08:10How are the champions?

08:12What a result.

08:13Brilliant. Oh, it's a laser for him.

08:15Oh, it's fabulous. He is unbelievable.

08:18That was some moment.

08:19Absolutely. These are the ones that you strive for, for them.

08:23Give them the confidence then to come again next year.

08:26It doesn't matter whether you come from a big farm or a small farm or no farm.

08:30Or no farm.

08:31All you need is the passion.

08:32That's it.

08:33That's it for part one. Coming up after the break,

08:40we really do need to talk about a weed that's invading our fields.

08:43They're very healthy looking.

08:45They're all sprayed and they are looking healthy.

08:47They are supposed to die, but they are looking healthy.

08:49And pumpkins everywhere you look.

08:52This year's grain harvest is by now safely gathered in, with a lot of it sitting in stores like this right around the country.

09:07But tillage farmers are facing a rapidly developing threat to their livelihoods and it's growing in fields in every county in Ireland.

09:16This is black grass, a highly competitive weed that has the potential to spread rapidly.

09:24In the UK it is estimated to cost tillage farmers there a half a billion pounds every year as a result of reduced and contaminated yields.

09:32Last July, Conor O'Callaghan, a Czech's tillage advisor took me to a field that was infested with black grass.

09:41He got permission from the farmer on the basis that their identity and the location would not be revealed.

09:50Conor, it's taken quite a while to pull this story together.

09:53And part of the problem was to try and find a farmer who would talk to us who has black grass and I've really struggled.

09:59Why is that?

10:00I think farmers, they're worried and scared.

10:04This can be so detrimental to their livelihood and to what they know.

10:08So it's very hard to get a tillage farmer to come and put up their hand and say, yes, there is a potential problem here.

10:19Look across here, we can go there either.

10:23Holy.

10:24We'll get this done and just get out of here.

10:26That is serious.

10:29Once fully ripe, black grass is easily spotted.

10:33The seed heads standing tall above this crop of winter wheat.

10:39This is unbelievable.

10:40I have never seen anything like this in Ireland before.

10:43Yeah, it's one of the worst fields I've seen with my time as a tillage advisor.

10:48What does this actually mean for the farmer?

10:50It means he has a major problem on his hands.

10:55Black grass is not a new weed.

10:57But it's only in the last 10 years that it has really emerged as a threat to Irish crop growers.

11:03It has an astonishing ability to multiply.

11:07Some plants can have 60 to 100 seed heads producing as many as 10,000 seeds.

11:12Each one with the potential to produce another plant crowding out the farmer's crop.

11:20It outcompetes the crop that is growing alongside.

11:23Yeah, as you can see here today in this crop, and that gives you the reduction in yield.

11:28I'm looking at your boots and I'm looking at my boots and I'm seeing black grass.

11:39Is that how easy it is to spread?

11:41It can't spread as easily as that.

11:42I've come across clients who spray crops and they have had black grass grow in their yard

11:50where they wash down their sprayer after they have been in a field infected with a small population of black grass.

11:57In May of this year, as a result of the risk posed by black grass,

12:01the Department of Agriculture added it to its list of noxious weeds.

12:05When black grass is present, landowners are now directed to destroy the unharvested crop

12:11or parts thereof depending on the scale of the infestation.

12:16Affected land must also be taken out of crop production for at least five years.

12:21Well, such serious financial loss could be about to impact a lot more farmers.

12:27As some strains of the plant are showing resistance to herbicides.

12:33At Chagas Oak Park Crop Research Station in Carlow,

12:36black grass seeds collected from farmers are being studied to understand the extent of the problem.

12:43Dr. Vijay Vaskar is one of the scientists carrying out the research.

12:47So what we are doing here is that we are looking at the levels of resistance.

12:50So they were sprayed up to eight times the recommended label rate.

12:53And you could see that they are happily growing.

12:56Just to be clear, some of those plants grown in a glass house were sprayed with

13:00eight times the recommended label rate of commonly used herbicides and still survived.

13:05Yes. There is no control at all. That's how scary it is.

13:08Out of all of the samples that you get sent in here to test,

13:11what percentage is showing resistance to commonly used herbicides?

13:15Over 60%.

13:17That's huge.

13:18That's a huge, like I keep saying, historically we haven't faced black grass in Ireland.

13:24And we don't want this weed.

13:25And we have to take all the measures to prevent the spreading of this black grass.

13:30In the UK, resistant strains of black grass were first identified as far back as the early 1980s.

13:38It's now reached a stage where as much as 85% of all samples tested are resistant to usable herbicides.

13:44John Cousins is a weed specialist with ADAS, the UK's largest independent agricultural and environmental consultancy.

13:51Way back in 1982, we began to get little glimmers of what it was going to look like.

13:57And we reached the tipping point in about 2012, and now we've got a really whole scale problem in terms of efficacy of herbicides.

14:05Have you seen tillage farmers, arable farmers, having to exit crop production?

14:10Not yet, but the weed wasn't associated with the real financial pressures that the industry is under now in the past.

14:18To date, it's been much more about growing crops that they know are going to lose them money, but to help manage the weed in the long term.

14:24It's been a real story of just progressive erosion of options for weed control in the crop.

14:32Control in black grass, once it's established, is the main challenge.

14:36After some more phone calls, I eventually found two Kildare farmers who were willing to talk to me about their experience.

14:42In 2015, Adam Goodwin and his father, Frank, discovered black grass growing in a field of wheat.

14:50They traced the seed source back to imported oilseed rape.

14:54Through careful management, they managed to save most of the crop, but the field has still not been returned to tillage production.

15:02You ultimately put the field into grass, and did you think that was the problem solved?

15:06Well, that is a good way to handle it. It doesn't like competition, so in a field of grass, it's not so prolific and it's not so crazy.

15:15The good ones gave themselves five years to get on top of their black grass problem.

15:19But even today, it's still cropping up.

15:23We're not what you would say going for 10 years, but even after 10 years, if you cultivate this field again,

15:27and you find black grass go back into grass, you can't risk the rest of the farm.

15:33You have to take it seriously, and there are people, I think, who are not taking it seriously, but

15:37certainly if you get the variety of it that we have, you know, it takes you seriously.

15:42It's not just in imported seed batches that black grass can find its way onto farms.

15:47The overall percentage of UK or English seed used in Ireland and the Republic is actually quite low,

15:55but we do import an awful lot of UK and English straw.

15:59Saying that, you just sent a shiver down my spine. Straw is an absolute curse. So,

16:04straw going from farms with high levels of black grass, obviously, you don't have the same

16:10certification process. You're not protected in any way. The fact that Irish farmers are importing straw,

16:16you know, there's a red light flashing in my head a little bit. I think that's a very dangerous practice.

16:20While up to now there seems to have been a reluctance on the part of many Irish farmers to admit to

16:28having black grass on their land, if the UK experience is anything to go by, early intervention

16:34will make all the difference. If this is not addressed properly, you won't be in tillage farming

16:40in a very few years. You know, one simple seed in this field is enough to knock this, you're in a 30 acre

16:47field here to knock it out of tillage for at least 10 years. One simple little seed is that serious.

16:58Well, it is Halloween tomorrow and across the country, fine orange pumpkins are on display.

17:05What you can see here are 25,000 pumpkins in one field in North Dublin. Their story started,

17:12however, way back in May. In fact, enough seeds were sown last May by Donnelly Fresh Farms to produce

17:20more than 400,000 pumpkins. When I visited, the fields were ready for harvesting.

17:28Leon Curley is the farm manager responsible for the crop.

17:31Leon, I was born on Halloween, so pumpkins are part of my blood. I still think this is such a weird

17:39sight to see. I don't know why. It's very, very unusual. And they're ready to be picked.

17:44Absolutely, yes. The very, very busy period, as you can imagine, from September right through the October

17:49season. And pretty nerve-wracking because, of course, there's the only one deadline, isn't there?

17:53It's Halloween or nothing. Yeah. Harvested, washed, all crammed into a small season. So,

17:58trying to hit them deadlines is, yeah, it can be a bit manic. The pumpkin is classified as a fruit.

18:05And while these varieties can be eaten, they're not destined for the dinner table.

18:10All of this is decorative. This is not something you're selling for eating. No, so there are eating

18:15varieties available and they can be at, but the market in Ireland is very much for the carving and

18:19decorating varieties. This tradition is thought to have started in Ireland and Scotland. During the

18:29Celtic festival of Samhain, people carved scary faces in turnips and placed them outside their homes

18:36to warn off unwanted spirits. When the Irish emigrated to America, they began to use pumpkins instead.

18:43That custom travelled back across the Atlantic Ocean. We grow nine different varieties from munchkin to

18:51monster, as you see here. And how big are the munchkins? So, munchkins will be sort of small 10

18:56centimetre pumpkins to the mediums being sort of 20 centimetres and monsters up on 30 centimetres plus.

19:03There's definitely a trade-off between trying to find the varieties that the consumers want and also the

19:08varieties that grow quite well in an Irish climate. And it's a pretty drizzly morning here. What kind

19:14of climate do they like? Yeah, so pumpkins grow well in well-drained and fertile soils. You're looking

19:19for open fields where you've got good sun exposure. This season has been quite mild and dry in springtime

19:25when we were sowing, which led to really good germination rates. We got rain at very pivotal moments.

19:31And then the season itself, we've got rain at crucial intervals so that the pumpkins could swell very,

19:36very well in the fields. All the pumpkins here are harvested by hand.

19:44Each pumpkin is cut from its plant, then left out in the open to cure or ripen for one to two weeks.

19:51Leon took me to a nearby field to see a popular variety known as Hermes.

19:56So what we're looking for in the perfect pumpkin is something like this. We've got a really good skin

20:01finish on them. Yeah. You've got the handle is well cured and dry. There's a thick skin on these

20:07because they're good for carving. I presume if they were edible, you'd want a thinner skin

20:11and more pulp inside. You would. And they're more difficult to grow in an Irish climate because

20:15they're more at risk. These ones are very much a sturdy or stronger growing pumpkin. So they suit the

20:20Irish climate very well. There is another pumpkin variety that's becoming frighteningly popular for festive displays.

20:27Leon, I do not remember these when I was younger. Fairly phenomenal. They're this sort of ghostly white

20:34colour. Yeah. So the variety themselves is called ghost. And unlike obviously all our standard orange

20:38varieties, they start off life white and stay white through. It's definitely got more of a ghost feel to it.

20:43And where's the idea from? I mean, is the public asking for it? Yeah, these novel, smaller, different

20:49varieties are kind of definitely becoming more and more popular, especially for the like of your Halloween

20:52party and your evening, you know, at home with the kids. It's nice to have a variety.

20:58Having started out as wholesalers, Donnelly Fresh have been growing fruit and vegetables for 13 years.

21:05They're one of five large-scale growers of pumpkins supplying major retailers here.

21:11James O'Connor is the group's CEO. A bit unusual that we were wholesalers and selling and got into

21:18farming and we saw the demand for provenance. We saw the support that the Irish grown was getting

21:25and we saw the need to have good scaled Irish productions. In the last five years, the area of

21:32farmland under pumpkins in Ireland has soared by 82%. About 10 years ago, there was a lot of imported

21:39pumpkins and when it started to become a thing in the Irish retail and we got involved importing. And then we

21:45saw the opportunity and we saw the support for our carbon footprint. So then we gradually got into

21:50pumpkins and developed and increased our volume every year over the last 10 years.

21:54Just how important are the pumpkins in terms of your overall business?

21:58Well, it's an important part of the farm business. You know, we're very big on cabbages,

22:01we're very big on cauliflower and pumpkins is our third crop.

22:06The graded pumpkins are run through a brusher and a washer ready for packaging and distribution.

22:11It's a quick process. Absolutely, yeah. And it has to be for such a tight window for Halloween,

22:16of course. All spruced up after their wash, the pumpkin's distinctive lines are clearly visible.

22:23Each one represents a cluster of seeds inside. Each rib on a pumpkin you see represents seed from

22:30inside. Never knew that. A bit like rings on a tree. There you go. While pumpkins are still a

22:36scarce sight on the Irish dinner table, is there ever likely to be a market for pumpkins as food?

22:42And in this pumpkin market, where do you think the public is going? I mean,

22:45I presume looking forward the next five years, 10 years for your business, what are you seeing?

22:49Well, I mean, in other parts of the world, you see pumpkin on the menu all the time and you see

22:54pumpkin seeds, a big thing. I'm not sure where the market in Ireland is going to go there. But again,

22:58if it's the trend other places, I'm sure that edible piece will come eventually. Not quite sure where

23:03it's going to go, but we'd love to do something innovative and try and bring the consumer along

23:07with us.

23:11That's it for this week's episode on next week's show.

23:14Stephen takes the pulse of a tillage sector under pressure.

23:18Prices are on the floor. Stores are full of grain and nobody really wants it with cheap imports

23:23coming in. Ella is on a farm in Galway that's growing things both strange and wonderful.

23:29They have all the qualities of a normal cucumber, but way better.

23:32That is delicious.

23:34And I'll be meeting a dairy farmer in Meath, doing something different with his milk.

23:39When I was younger, milk was the original energy drink. It's what everyone went to. So I thought,

23:44bring milk to the convenience fridge.

23:46Don't forget this program will be repeated on Sunday at lunchtime after the farming weather.

23:51You can contact us on Facebook and follow us on X. And you can hear more farming stories on

23:57countrywide this Saturday morning on RTE Radio 1.

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