Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the presentation by the witnesses from Teagasc and Professor Boyle. I am concerned with the eight weeks Professor Boyle mentioned. Is eight weeks even enough? What have we learned? I am not too au fait with the north west of the country but when the fodder crisis moved down to the south, if it is closely looked at, the farmers on the good ground were in a bigger crisis situation than the farmers on the wet ground. They seemed to have a better management system in place with fodder storage over a longer winter period. We were all great at driving on the process of increasing milking capacity and the national herd in the last number of years but was there enough focus done on the management of the herd? What I am trying to say is that it was all about getting from calf to cow out to grass and the emphasis on that is why we have yards with no stock or fodder. The farmers had the idea of getting the cow out to grass straight away and not even having some straw in the yard, just having a clear yard. Should we be changing our focus on that farming practice on good land because the major problems seem to have arisen during the fodder crisis on the good land?

Deputy Willie Penrose has mentioned that we have to consider reducing herd and stocking rates, but the Chairman will realise 100 cows will do the same damage as 300 in a paddock. I, therefore, ask the Teagasc officials if we need to review the eight-week fodder reserve for the future?

Tillage farmers always play second fiddle when it comes to farming practices and a crisis. It was mentioned that mills were working 24 hours a day to get feed out, but some of them had problems in getting raw materials at the ports. If we had produced more grain in the country, the mills would have had more grain. The emphasis seems to move from any type of farming to milking, but that affects dairy farmers because those farmers who move into dairying do not have proper raw materials at source.