The way of the combine: a yield against the odds

For many people, the strange summer weather is annoying, but for tillage farmers such as Tom Short in Co Wicklow the moisture index is a barometer of their livelihood for the next couple of years as well as for the harvest that’s finally in hand

IT’S A glorious Saturday afternoon in Co Wicklow. Cars are going towards the beach with smiles in their windows. In Newtownmountkennedy a dog is stretched out on the footpath, lazily wagging his tail. A woman is carrying a clutch of ice-cream cones to a car full of eager children.

A mile up the road, the beach is the last thing on Tom Short’s mind. He’s thinking about moisture levels, field conditions and tyre pressures. The tillage farmer has been like a hen on hot bricks all morning, waiting for the sun to dry his oats so he can start cutting them. He finally decides the time has arrived and his combine harvester rolls into the field.

The days of neighbours arriving with scythes to help save the crops are over. Now they come bearing combines, tractors and trailers. And so he is accompanied by his neighbour Colin Heath, who brought his own combine. He has offered to help because his crop isn’t ready yet. “We are lucky to have a lot of very big modern machinery around us, capable of doing big acreage quickly,” Tom says. “We really have to work fast when we get fine weather.”

The two combine harvesters glide up and down the field, effortlessly cutting and sucking up the oats with giant rollers. They are fed into the threshing mechanism of the combine where the grain and straw are separated. The straw is spat back onto the ground and the oats are taken to a storage bin. When the bin is full, the combine shoots the oats out through a large side pipe into a waiting trailer that takes them back to the farmyard. The straw is left to ripen before being baled.

It’s unexpectedly quiet in the cab of the combine and it’s not surprising that some farmers find it therapeutic to guide a machine through the fields of gold with Lyric FM providing a soothing soundtrack. Some of the more luxurious models come with satellite-guided steering, mini-fridges and computer screens offering so much information you could probably book a flight on them.

Tom says he had a buyer for this crop before it was planted last October. He has agreed a contract with Glanbia, which plans to export the grain for use in breakfast cereals. “You just can’t grow on spec anymore,” he says. “Selling forward is a relatively new thing but it’s a low-margin business and you really do need to know that you are going to have a buyer at the end of it.”

The IFA grain secretary, Fintan Conway, says selling the crop before it has been planted is becoming increasingly popular. “You could sell next year’s crop now, or even 2014’s crop if you wanted,” he says. Grain prices have been very volatile in recent years so agreeing the price that will be paid in two years might seem risky but he says it’s the opposite, as it gives farmers a guaranteed sale. And they can buy themselves out of the contract if they wish to. At a price of course.

Harvesting on Short’s farm began on July 28th, when Tom cut his winter barley crop. He doesn’t expect to finish until the middle of September, if the weather permits.

Earlier this month he cut the oilseed rape – those bright yellow blossoms that always take people by surprise when they flower. The crop is very vulnerable to bad weather and one night of heavy wind can destroy it.

He is anxious to get to his wheat and spring-barley crops next. If ripe crops are left for too long in the field the quality deteriorates and the straw breaks down. “It’s absolutely imperative that the last days of August will be fine. If it’s not, we’re definitely going to have big losses,” he predicts.

This might be the sunny south-east, but even here pools of water have gathered in the tyre tracks in his field, evidence of the torrential rain of the past two months. “You wouldn’t expect to see that here in August,” he says with a wry smile.

Tom is happy with the quality of the oats. “So far, so good. Moisture is down to around 17, maybe 18 per cent. It’s going to make the quality standard.” The moisture content of the oats will have to be brought down to 14 per cent so that it will store properly over the winter. The higher the moisture, the more expensive it is to dry it. He has his own grain drier in the yard, a tall tower with a diesel burner that blows hot air into the grain.

After the oats are dried, he stores them until Glanbia is ready to collect the grain in November. He also sold his wheat before it was planted. It will probably be used in chicken or pig feed, while the barley will be sold locally.

The wheat goes into storage on his farm and might not be collected until next May or June. “The oilseed rape will be shipped to Germany. It’s probably waiting at a port now,” he says. “It’s not economic to crush it here. It’s a disgrace when you think about it.”

A by-product, rape cake, is used as a high-protein animal feed here.

Hiring casual help for the harvest is essential on a big tillage farm like this; it’s one good thing about the demise of the Celtic Tiger, says Short. “Before it was a nightmare to get casual help. When the buildings were going well, you couldn’t get a driver for a day. Now it’s much, much easier.”

Looking at the constant stream of heavy machinery travelling between the fields and the farmyard it’s clear that this is no place for little ones. Tom and Geraldine Short have four children: Ciara, Brian, Niamh and Conor, aged from seven to 17. “Our type of farming is not conducive to children,” he says. “Safety is paramount for us and we have to ban them from the yard at this time.”

The children aren’t involved with the cattle for the same reason. “Cattle are big and they are wilder now because they are not handled as much as they would have been years ago,” says Geraldine. Because of these safety fears, the couple felt their children were being removed from the farm so they decided to start keeping sheep after a break of many years.

“We love the sheep,” says Geraldine. “They are safe around children and the whole family can get involved. It’s brought the kids back into the yard again.”

Tom says it’s also teaching them a few life lessons. “Nature is incredible. They see animals being born and thriving. They see them getting sick and unfortunately some won’t survive. But they have to see that too. It’s a great education for kids.”

He observes how things have changed since he took over the family farm. “When we were growing up we were on a 200-acre farm but in today’s terms for tillage it’s not much better than a part-time job. So you have to either rent more land or do contracting. We’ve done a bit of both by expanding our own farm and we do contracting work as well.”

In his parent’s time, it would have taken three days to cut the 50 acres we are looking at. Thanks to the two combines, it is now done in less than a day.

Geraldine says her husband goes into “harvest mode” at this time of year and there’s only one topic of conversation. So is a family holiday in late July or August out of the question?

“Definitely,” she says. “Gosh, you wouldn’t dream of it.” But she doesn’t mind. “This is the culmination of all the year’s work. These weeks are make or break. But there’s a great buzz too and I like that. As long as things are going well, of course.”

The harvest is a very busy time for her too. She spends her days collecting and dropping off workers and picking up parts when a machine breaks down, as it inevitably does. Ask any farmer. It wouldn’t be the harvest without a breakdown and a brief crisis.

She also unloads the grain drier and weighs the lorries if called upon. And of course the workers have to be fed. “Oh yes, I would always give the lads their dinner. They are working so hard you would have to,” she says. “We have four extra at the table today. And you’d always put another name in the pot just in case.”

Geraldine likes the way neighbours always come together at times like this. “You’d never see a neighbour stuck. It’s a good thing, isn’t it? And in a year like this, you need all the help you can get.”

Her husband is one of the 11,852 farmers who grew cereals last year. Fintan Conway says 10,577 farmers grew less than 50 hectares (just over 123 acres) with 1,275 farmers growing more than that. Grain farmers are concentrated in places such as Louth, north Dublin, north Kildare, Meath, Wexford and Cork but there are also pockets in unexpected places such as Finn Valley in Co Donegal, and Ardfert in Co Kerry.

THE IFA MANnotes that Ireland achieved the highest yield in the world on the winter-wheat crop last year, and not for the first time. "We're not expecting anything like that this year," he says, with considerable understatement. He estimates that both the winter barley and oilseed rape crops are 95 per cent complete, but it's a different story when it comes to spring barley. "This time last year it was about 75 per cent complete. Now it's not even 5 per cent."

And it’s a worse story for winter wheat, which is the most valuable crop.

“We’re lucky if there’s less than 1 per cent cut. This time last year, it was well on.”

He says a fortnight or three weeks of “excellent weather” is needed if the harvest is to be saved. “There may be fields that will not be cut at all this year because farmers won’t have the chance to do it. The crop will just rot back into the ground. That would be very, very unusual.”

By the time the National Ploughing Championships come around in late September, the vast bulk of the harvest should be complete, leaving farmers free to kick the tyres on shiny new tractors and eye up the combines with tinted windows.

After The Irish Times leaves Newtownmountkennedy on Saturday evening, Tom Short works through until 2am, the lights of the combine guiding his path around the dark fields. He cuts about 65 acres. “It got too damp then,” he says afterwards. “Normally we’d keep going until about 9pm but in a summer like this if the night is good and there’s a light wind you would work through the night. Needs must, as they say.

The tillage programme manager at Teagasc, Jim O’Mahony, knows all about working late into the night. He is on the phone at all hours of the day and night, fielding calls from worried farmers. He advises farmers to save the most valuable crops, such as malting barley, first and leave fields with poor drainage until later, in case machinery gets bogged down. And while farmers are tempted to leave crops for as long as possible to allow moisture levels to fall, he says they should harvest as soon as the moisture is between 18 and 22 per cent. “Waiting for the crops to dry any more could result in losses,” he warns.

He echoes the views of many when he says this is a very strange year. “Normally about 80 per cent of the harvest would be cut by now. It’s really very unusual.” Grain prices are at an all-time high this year because of factors such as the drought in the US, but he says farmers will still find it difficult to avoid losses due to the bad weather.

But despite all the stress brought on by this year’s weather, Tom Short says he wouldn’t swap his way of life for anything. “I know nothing else,” he says. “I always loved farming, and I always wanted to be a farmer. I have no regrets. But, oh, we could do with a bit of good weather.”