Mr. Michael Moloney:

For example, with spring barley in 2019 there were 94,000 ha sowed but the following year there were 141,000 ha sowed. In 2018, as another example of the same crop, there were 124,000 ha sowed, so that dropped to 94,000 ha sowed in the following year. There would have been a change in crop balance with respect to other crops. Farmers may have switched to winter crops on the basis of yield, as such, and spreading their workload.

We might start seeing a significant drop in cropping area. That happened in 2012, when there was a 50,000 ha drop, and last year, when there was a 9,000 resurgence in cropping area. That has stabilised over the past couple of years. We analyse why that is happening and in that case it probably came with the abolition of milk quotas and farmers looking at profitability within the farm gate, as I mentioned. They may have made the decision that dairying was more profitable than tillage, which led to the switch in that case. In this case I suspect the drop in hemp was down to the market in what to do with that product.