Mr. Jonny Greene:

I will continue if I may. I will address Deputy Martin Kenny on the age profile and average area. We have some very big farms within our group, we have some small part-time farmers, we have livestock farmers, mixed farmers and we have a lot of tillage farmers. We started out as a tillage group but we have expanded as mixed farmers and livestock farmers became part of it. We do see that livestock integration onto tillage soils could have big benefits for all enterprises, like organic, through fresh grazing and pastures with less worms as grass or forage crops as part of our crop rotation.

There are benefits to all within the system.

I refer to the question of us being an expanded GLAS. Those of us practising conservation agriculture were doing a lot of the GLAS measures before GLAS was even dreamed up. As with a lot of schemes, similarly to the greening within the basic payment scheme and everything, a lot of the people in the group are carrying out these practices because it is good farming practice not because the rules say we have to do it. That is important. We make our decisions on the farm on inputs, fertiliser levels or whatever because it is what the farm requires not because that is what the rule book says.

A lot of our figures and much of the work we do tends to be on the more intensive farms where a lot of inputs are used. Therefore, we have more inputs to take away. On the smaller, more marginal, less intensive farms there would naturally be a lower level of inputs. When it comes to wet ground with difficult grazing conditions, I do not know how familiar the committee is with holistic grazing systems, but more matter might be grown so that the soil is then better able to take the traffic. If some of these wet areas are grazed too tightly, it will create problems.

In reply to Deputy Corcoran Kennedy's question, yes this is a very big issue worldwide. Ireland is very late coming to the party. No tillage, direct drilling etc. would be very common in South America. There are very high percentages in the 80s or 90s, I could not give the Deputy the right figure but it is big. In all of those countries it is about conserving moisture. If the storms in America of the 1930s are looked at, that was a result of over-cultivation so now they have learned from that, they are doing less cultivation and going back to more natural ways. I grow peas for Batchelors tinned peas. Years ago we used to grow the vining peas but that contract is no longer available and a lot of the beans grown are for animal feed. The protein payment is a good example. There is a need for home grown proteins within Europe. Our production of these is very low; there is an awful lot of imported soya in the EU. That is why I believe the protein payments have been put in place. It is very important to be able to supply our own markets.

Our young farmers and our friends from Macra na Feirme were here earlier. We have had various groups out to the farm, one of which was a group of Kildalton students. We would also entertain a lot of knowledge transfer groups and discussion groups and I found the questions coming from the students of Kildalton were way more open and positive. This is a new way of farming and it is similar to organic farming in the sense that it takes a farmer in. It is more about working with what we have, working with our soil and nature and it is a great way to farm. As a group we were very happy to entertain the young people and bring them into that. Mr. McAuley had the Kildalton students as well and I had a few Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, students doing studies a couple of weeks ago on worm numbers. WIT and Kildalton are looking at this approach and we would like to see some more of it.

The state of our soil is very variable. A year like this shows up an awful lot. The fields that have been well managed held on better in the difficult conditions over the past six or eight months than some of the over-stocked, over-cultivated fields. That became very evident this sowing season just gone past. I have written "nutritional farming" down here, getting more from soils in the state they are. The best comparison I can make is with human health. People look after themselves and eat their fruit and vegetables - an apple a day keeps the doctor away - and we are similar with how we treat our soil. We would prefer to fertilise our soil with a natural compost than a bagged fertiliser or chemical product. It is a more balanced product, it is healthier and we believe farmers get an awful lot more bang for their buck.

I cannot give any figures in response to Deputy Cahill but the numbers are certainly on the increase. It is very big in North America and South America, as well as Australia, and it is moving into Europe and the UK as well. It is slowly coming over here, gaining much momentum. As Mr. O'Flaherty pointed out, it is very similar with organics. On the farm at home I try my very best to take the best from both systems, organic and conventional. I try to mix that in an integrated system.

The Deputy asked how many are involved in having diversity across crops but we cannot have too many. Nature loves diversity. When we examine diversity, we might think about going with cash crops but it is not necessarily just about that. Many of us are growing cover or nurse crops so there is a diversity of cash and cover crops. We are now expanding into the growing of companion species. For example, I have a field of wheat at home with a nice underlay of white clover no different from a grassland sward. We grew oilseed rape on the farm along with buckwheat, which is a great phosphate scavenger, allowing us to use fewer phosphate fertilisers. It naturally harvests phosphate from the ground.