Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Carbon Sequestration and Storage in Agriculture: Discussion

Mr. Richard Kennedy:

On the dairy farms, we are a commercial business. We must apply our research commercially. The research must be commercially applicable. We must be able to get that onto our customers' farms. This is what we have done. We have quite a few dairy farms that have integrated a number of paddocks into their rotation of a multispecies. I am aware of quite a few, but there is one very progressive young supplier in the west who has had his multispecies sward in for the past year. It has integrated perfectly into a system. He did not see any challenges or issues with bloat. His performance this year has been very good. It is one year, but a number of customers have applied it. While it might not look as attractive as perennial ryegrass, maybe it is just that we are not used to looking at.