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A s input costs skyrocket, five farmers across different sectors tell us where they are being hit hardest and what steps they are taking to reduce their expenditure
Solar panels and liquid fertiliser: Helen Harris on her tillage farm at Clane, Co Kildare. Photos: Lorraine O'Sullivan
Helen's John Deere sprayer
Helen and her husband Philip in a field of beans
Robert and his wife Ciara with some of their herd
Robert's Continental cattle in the sheds
Tom Sherman with a Bonham piglet in the farrowing cabin on his farm at Dromahane, Mallow, Co Cork. Photo: David Creedon
A delivery of 28t of whole barley being unloaded into silos to be milled and used as feed for the pigs on Tom's farm
Piglets and sows in the farrowing cabin
Tom Boyd with his flock on his farm. Photo: Clive Wasson
Tom's son William checks one of the pens
Tom's flock is in a remote part of Donegal
The three Fs — feed, fertiliser and fuel — coupled with rising energy costs are leaving farmers across the country with no option but to cut costs where they can.
F rom reducing livestock numbers and cutting down on fertiliser use to saving diesel by cutting down on trips to the mart, we speak to five farmers — from different parts of the country, in different sectors — about what measures they are undertaking in a bid to reduce their bills.
Helen Harris: Tillage farmer, Clane, Co Kildare
Helen Harris and her husband Philip have been experimenting with precision mapping on their farm.
This has allowed them to “see exactly what fields need what, and when they need it”.
“We discovered, through the sampling, that our farm is split into pockets,” says Helen. “It’s essentially like three different farms and each needs different nutrients and management to fulfil its purpose. So we’re trying to be site-specific now and know what each field is growing this year and then give it what it needs.
“This way, each field is getting the correct amount of N, P and K and pHs, lime and elements.”
The Harrises also opted for liquid fertiliser this year to reduce the waste and avoid the risk of polluting the farm waterways.
Helen's John Deere sprayer
“It is more expensive but it is available to the soil and there’s no chance of it spreading further than you want it to go,” says Helen.
“It won’t end up in the waterways like regular fertiliser could, because it is spread directly over the crop using a dribble bar.
“I think tillage farmers will be doing more of it in the future — taking a very valuable commodity and putting it exactly where you need it.”
Helen says they used to “lash out big bags of fertiliser”, whereas now they are “all about feeding the soil, not the crop and only using fertiliser where it is really needed.”
“We have also been chopping the straw back in, and it’s a much more slow release type of natural fertiliser.”
Despite the high cost of fertiliser, Helen and Philip are trying to forward-buy it for next year.
“We’re trying to buy some fertiliser now even though it’s a shocking high value,” Helen says. “We’ll just be happy to know we have it because everything is becoming harder to get.”
Helen and her husband Philip in a field of beans
The Harrises installed solar panels on the farm recently and although they haven’t been up and running long enough yet to tell just how much of an impact they will have on their energy bill, they hope they will see a big difference next month.
“We got in solar panels a month ago, we put in 20 of them and got a 2.5kw battery,” says Helen.
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“We have good roof space and there has been good sunny weather. On a dull day you can see the level plummets, though.
“People are only being paid since July to put electricity back into the grid. We are paying 24c a unit to buy it but only getting 14c a unit to sell it.
“We haven’t got our bill yet but it will be an awful lot less.”
Tom Sherman, pig farmer, Mallow, Co Cork
Tom Sherman keeps his dam-bred sows in a fully integrated unit. While feed and energy are his highest costs, “there’s not much more” he can do to run his ship any tighter.
“Feed is our biggest cost and always has been. It accounts for 75pc of our input costs.
“However, energy is now costing more than labour, and our electricity bill is roughly €5,500 a month.”
Tom Sherman with a Bonham piglet in the farrowing cabin on his farm at Dromahane, Mallow, Co Cork. Photo: David Creedon
Pig farming, Tom says, is always a high-input system.
“We have electric heat pads in the farrowing rooms, and the weaners, growers and fat pigs are all in fan-controlled houses to keep them cool and keep the air fresh,” he says.
“These fans run all year round and they’re hugely important from an animal welfare and hygiene point of view.
“Light is very important too on a pig farm and all our buildings are on timers so that the lights come on automatically in the morning.
Piglets and sows in the farrowing cabin
“You need a minimum of 300 lux of light for 18 hours a day to grow pigs.”
Over the last few years, Tom has replaced all the bulbs with LED to reduce his electricity bill. He says along with being easier and cheaper to run, they don’t create any heat, so they reduce the risk of fire in highly populated sheds.
Tom also mills his own feed on the farm and runs a ‘wet-feed’ system whereby all the pig feed is mixed with water and pumped into the sheds up to 17 times a day.
A delivery of 28t of whole barley being unloaded into silos to be milled and used as feed for the pigs on Tom's farm
“There’s a very high energy cost in feeding pigs. We make all our own feed on-site and home milling is a huge cost,” he says.
“We make the feed at night at off-peak times to save electricity. We start milling at 11.30pm and we do this three or four times a week. The system is about 90pc automated.
“Labour isn’t the problem here, it’s energy costs.”
For the last five years, it has cost Tom 4c to produce every kilogram of pigmeat; this year however, it’s costing him 9c/kg.
Tom's son William checks one of the pens
“That’s over 100pc of an increase. Pig farms are run very efficiently; we’re milling by night and doing some of the feeding very early in the morning at off-peak times, so there’s not much else we can do.
“We already need to run things as efficiently as possible because the margins are so thin in this business.”
Robert Stanley, beef farmer, Tullow, Co Carlow
Robert Stanley and his wife Ciara have run their Coppenagh House Farm as a beef enterprise for the last number of years and now they’re getting into pigs as well.
Feed is where most of their money is going but Robert says other inputs like energy and diesel are quickly catching up.
Robert and his wife Ciara with some of their herd
“It depends on the time of year, but in the winter when the cattle are all in, our meal bill is around €3,000 a week,” says Robert, who sells his beef through beef boxes and has just opened a farm shop.
“We’re heavily feed dependent and go through 7-8t a week when the cattle are in, but then that bill goes down to zero for a few weeks during the summer.
“Meal is after jumping 30pc on last year. It hasn’t quite doubled but it’s a massive increase.”
Like a lot of farmers, fertiliser is another huge input for the Stanleys and this year they’re trying to cut costs by using their own shed dung.
“All our sheds are dung-bedded so we spread the paddocks with dung this year and got a chain harrow for behind the tractor, to rip out the old dead grass and spread the dung evenly,” Robert says.
“We’re hoping we will be able to cut fertiliser costs with this.”
The electricity bill for the farm is up considerably on this time last year, and Robert and Ciara have looked at ways to reduce their energy costs.
Robert's Continental cattle in the sheds
“With the hikes in energy prices the farm electricity bill has gone way up, and that’s without our new farm shop added on. That will push it even further,” Robert says.
“We did look at putting in solar panels on the shed roofs and while there is grant aid available for installing solar, the payback you get from selling your electricity back into the grid is so minimal that we decided against it for now.
“We haven’t ruled them out but if we were able to sell electricity back to the grid we’d like to get a fair price for it.”
Sean Callan, dairy farmer, Co Louth
Sean Callan and his family have seven robots, milking 500 cows across their two farms. While they have cut the cost of labour with the robots, they’re now using a “nice bit of electricity” to run them.
“We’re milking 350 spring-calving cows with the five robots and 140 spring and autumn calving cows on the other two,” Sean says.
“Our electricity bill from July to August this year was €4,100 — €2,400 to run five robots and €1,700 to run the other two.
“In 2020 we put in solar panels on the roofs of the two sheds and last year they generated 38pc of our energy costs, which is great.
“Installing them has been 100pc worth it. We have a six-year payback based on the solar panels being able to generate 35pc of our electricity costs.
“Our ESB bill is very similar in price to what it was before we put in the solar panels, but that’s after a big jump up in electricity rate.”
Sean has started to upgrade all of the lighting on the farm to LED.
“It’s too early to say if that’s made a difference yet because we only have a small percentage of the farm changed over but we’re hoping it will.”
Concentrated feed is another high input for Sean , and he is trying to find a way around this by improving the quality of his silage and reduce his fertiliser use.
“Our biggest input cost at the minute is probably concentrated feed. We’re feeding 1.5t a day,” he says. “We have incorporated a lot of clover this year, to try to reduce our reliance on nitrogen.
“We’re thinking of reducing our stocking rate by about 7pc, dropping back from milking 350 cows on the five robots to 330.
“We’ve been culling the bottom 5pc of cows for the last couple of years, cleaning up the farm. We’ve been culling for cell count and yields and we will be adding to that.”
Tom Boyd, sheep and suckler farmer, Carrickfin, Co Donegal
Tom Boyd says the “three fs” are what he’s been spending the most money on this year, and while he’s trying to cut costs where he can, it’s proving difficult.
“It’s feed, fuel and fertiliser for us, but fuel is the real killer. Electricity doesn’t affect us so much because we have an outdoor wintering system,” he says.
Tom Boyd with his flock on his farm. Photo: Clive Wasson
“I went to the mart last week and it cost me €80 in diesel — our closest mart is nearly an hour away in Milford.”
Tom’s remote location on the west Donegal coast makes every journey costly, and because his farm stretches across the sand dunes of Carrickfinn Beach, he clocks up 12-18km every winter morning, just feeding his cattle by tractor.
“Even just to pick up animal husbandry materials costs us an arm and a leg because of our location — we’re 35 miles from a vet,” he says.
“Leaving out silage uses up a good bit of diesel for us because the cattle and sheep are out-wintered so they’re scattered across the farm. The cows calve and sheep lamb out there too.
“Fuel affects us again when we’re getting our feedstuff delivered.
“Since February we’ve been charged another couple of euro for every tonne of feedstuff we buy. There’s been a steady increase each time and it all adds up.”
Tom and his family have started selling their animals from the house again, to reduce their mart trips.
“When we added up the fuel costs and the weight-loss of animals when you bring them to the mart, it doesn’t make sense for us to keep bringing them,” he says.
“We’ve been doing beef and lamb boxes and it’s been doing great but fuel costs have made me rethink our delivery options. Back when I started I wouldn’t think anything of travelling 70km to drop off a €100 box, but now I have to think about how much less I’m going to get for my box after delivery.”
Tom's flock is in a remote part of Donegal
Tom is trying to mitigate rising feed costs by growing his own oats and corn for whole-crop silage.
“From September 2021 to September 2022, our feed bill went up 42pc but there’s nothing we can do because we’re quite reliant on both feed and fuel,” he says.
“A change we made this year was growing oats and corn for whole-crop silage and baling it. We’re hoping it’ll be better quality and we’ll have less reliance on bought-in feedstuffs as a result.
“The cost of growing and baling it should still be less than what it would cost us to feed the animals with bought feedstuff.
“There’s not much we can do to reduce our fuel costs. We try to cut down on unnecessary journeys but there’s no way around using fuel in our farming system.”
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