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Downpours hamper Inishowen harvest
03.09.09
by Simon McGeady, Inishowen Independent
WITH THE grain harvest season underway, farmers in
Inishowen are anxiously awaiting a break from the
heavy rain in order to harvest their crop.
The downpours of the past two weeks have coincided
with the start of harvest time and should the
weather not improve significantly in September,
Donegal IFA Chairman William Monagle believes
farmers will suffer devastating effects.
“The weather in the North West wasn’t so bad up
until the last two weeks, but it’s been a disaster
since. I know of one man that was only able to get
three hours of cutting done in the last fortnight,
that was last Tuesday and conditions were far from
perfect from cutting but he felt he couldn’t wait
any longer and grabbed the opportunity,” said Mr
Monagle. |
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The Carrigans-based IFA
man added that while there might not be many
Inishowen farmers with large grain operations, a lot
of smaller farmers depended on gathering a certain
amount of grain to feed their livestock over the
winter.
“Farmers can put up with one bad season, but it’s
been bad season after bad season over the past
number of years. |
I would say even at
this stage the outlay farmers have invested in their
crops in 2009 will not be recoverable.”
With increased downward pressure on grain prices,
the Donegal IFA Chairman said the last thing farmers
needed to hear was the report that a ship containing
some 2000 tonnes of foreign grain had landed in
Dundalk a week ago.
“This always seems to happen around harvest time in
Ireland it seems to be done to drive down the price
of native grain.”
However Bridgend grain and potato farmer Desmond
Harkin was not so downbeat.
“We were able to get the winter grain harvested
three weeks ago without any problems. The spring
crop is still green so we wont be cutting that for a
while yet. Weather-wise, this year is not as bad as
last year and speaking personally our ground is
fairly sandy and can take a fair bit of rain.”
Mr Harkin did say that the market for grain in
Ireland could be better.
“We still have some grain from last year in storage,
I think Ireland was one of only a few countries in
Europe to have grain left over from last year,” said
Mr Harkin who added that official grain prices for
this year had yet to be announced. |
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