Not wanting to pull this off topic (Its a cover crops thread)....
As mentioned, I was at the Forum in Naas.
Traditionally, the main reason that people attend this is to get the new info on varieties for the autumn. Sadly, the recommended list wasn't available for the day.
It looked to me like a tactical decision to delay the varieties talk until late in the day so as to hold the crowd - not a good tactic as nobody likes having to sit through poor material for a couple of hours just to get the bit they came to hear.
The forum was broken into a number of sections;
1. Livestock Forage Needs for the Future
A very knowledgeable and quite enjoyable speaker. It was summed it up in my head that guys will want grass if they are overstocked, they will only want this some years so you might be able to sell to a "pool of farmers" - one or two different members of the "pool" will want grass each year.
My sum up - pie in the sky thinking.....
2. Red Clover - An ideal Tillage crop?
Again, a researcher who spoke from his organic background. Figures on the crop weren't overly impressive to me.
3. Template for Trading Forages.
Talk about contracts etc. "The Contract needn't be written in stone"...... it should serve as a method of highlighting issues to both parties that might not be otherwise considered. He rightly mentioned that there are a lot of "messers" out there so you need to be careful when choosing a potential customer.
Panel Discussion.....dragged on far too long with questions from the audience via the Slido App.
4. Winter Cereal Varieties for 2017, a real pity that the RL wasn't available. It would have been the ideal time to launch it.
I then left as I had to head home and things were already running late......
Having spoken to a lot of trade people over the past two days, many people were actually angry with the event. The lack of practical agronomic advice was a missed opportunity to give people what they really want.
There is lots and lots of information out there (at both sides of the Irish sea) that would be of interest.
Things will have to improve a lot or I fear that the attendance will really suffer next year.
This year is an extreme year where forage was badly needed. Next year (hopefully) grass will grow as normal - people will then forget the need for extra forage and the grass advisers and economists will tell the farmers that grazed grass is the cheapest form of feed and the show goes on as before.
If the topic of growing forage needs to be discussed, then this was not the correct place to do it.
I'm not trying to be critical of Teagasc here, they have some really terrific staff both at Advisory and Research levels. However, things need to be freshened up at such events (not easy, I know).