Mr. Kieran McEvoy:

In regard to the forward buying of grain, in most merchants and in many co-operatives there is an option to forward sell at different times of the year. However, by and large most of the grain is traded at harvest time in green grain which is at 20% moisture. That is the standard. I would say that more than 90% of the grain is traded directly at harvest time.

On the three-crop rule, our opinion is that the bottom brackets probably need to be brought upward. Crop rotation is key to good farm practice and it has got us through GAEC. It would be popular for me to say today that we should get rid of it. However, to be fair, if we increase the bottom hectares it would take a lot of people out of the three-crop rule who do not need to be in a crop rotation situation on their farms. That has had an impact on some of the smaller growers. My answer is to bring up the bottom hectares and rule certain people out and then have most of the larger growers stay in three-crop rotation because most of the larger growers are doing three-crop rotation and more anyway.

I disagree with the Senator completely on straw chopping. There was a plentiful supply of straw last harvest, as it turned out. Again this year, plenty of straw is available for anybody who wants straw. The aim of the straw incorporation measure is to build carbon in soil. Carbon in soil on many worn tillage farms has been quite depleted over a number of years because of the extraction of grain and straw going out the gate. It was one of the best schemes that the Department of agriculture brought into the tillage sector. Along with the IFA and Irish Grain Growers, we have fiercely defended it over recent years. If there are people exploiting the straw market, that is a different scenario but there has been a plentiful supply of straw, even with the straw incorporation measure. If we increase our targets and we get to the 400,000 ha target, we will be looking for the straw incorporation measure to be increased.

On protein and soya-----