THE HEAVY rain on Friday and Saturday that caused severe flooding in the east and midlands has further endangered the country's grain harvest. Teagasc tillage expert Jim O'Mahoney said that between 30 to 40 per cent of the crop remained standing in the fields and is under serious threat.
"There was no harvesting at all on Friday or Saturday and while there may be some harvesting later today or early Monday, more rain is forecast," he said yesterday.
He said crops along the east coast up into Meath and Louth had taken a heavy battering over the past few days and there was still a lot of winter wheat still to be won in Cork. "I think the grain will be harvested, but it will be of lower quality and value and there will be losses," he said. "Farmers were expecting to get up to €200 per tonne for their grain this year, but that price has fallen back to €150 and some millers are not quoting at all," he said. "That will mean severe losses for some of the farmers, especially those who have either gone back into the cereal business or were trying it out for the first time," he said.
Mr O'Mahoney said he could not disagree with the projected losses put forward by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) which claimed yesterday that farmers had already lost €70 million and the remaining crop worth €120 million was at risk. Later today, IFA president Padraig Walshe will undertake a tour of the worst-hit areas in the southeast and midlands. He will begin in Wexford tomorrow morning and visit counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly to see the impact the weather conditions have had. He will meet the leading co-ops and grain merchants to demand a fair price for this year's harvest.
In a statement yesterday he said that in light of the atrocious weather conditions, the worst for the harvest in over 50 years, merchants and traders must pay a viable price for cereals. He accused some grain merchants of adding insult to injury in this difficult year by reducing prices by 25 per cent, which would mean that many farmers would not even recover their costs from this harvest.
Dairy and beef farmers are also concerned that grazing is not available to their animals in many parts of the country because of poor ground conditions, and milk deliveries are well down on this time last year.
Badly hit too are Irish beekeepers as the poor weather has hit honey production across most of the country. Patrick Marcer of the North Kildare Beekeepers' Association, said that this has been the worst year for production in his memory. "We have one member who is in his 80s who has been keeping bees for the past 60 years and he says that he has never seen anything like it before."
He said most beekeepers have been forced to feed sugar to their bees to make up for the lack of pollen. "There is also the additional problem that many queen bees did not mate this year because of the weather or mated late in the year," he said.
"This will mean those colonies where the queen did not mate will die out and where mating was late, there will be weak stock coming into next year."