Long dry spell brings early start to harvest for farmers

Harvest time for tillage farmers has been creeping in earlier in recent years, with many grain growers already well into harvesting their first crop of the season due to the warm weather.

It is happening as a high temperature warning takes effect for 12 counties for the coming days.

One of the counties included is Laois, where tillage farmer Clive Carter has just started harvesting his winter barley crop.

"We've had a good run of weather, so it's great to get going at it," he said.

"We usually kick off around mid-July here on the farm. This year and last year were a little bit earlier. We were 10 July last year and we're a few days earlier, 8 July this year.

"We're very lucky that we have a couple of good weeks at the minute to get through it and you can take the foot off the gas a little bit."

The Laois farmer said that the stable weather pattern has been helpful because during unsettled conditions, the moistures would not be low enough to harvest.

"In broken weather you're battling to try and get a few tonnes every day, it's just stop-start and difficult," he said.

"But when you have a good run like you do now at the minute, it's easy to get it all done at your leisure ... it's bringing the crop in a little bit faster, but it's counteracted by the fact you can get through the work and get it done."

While the dry weather of recent weeks has been beneficial for grain growers, they are also wary of what it might represent in terms of more significant changes to the climate.

Mr Carter said that changing weather patterns in recent years were "partly" the reason why he moved towards winter crops.

"So we're getting them in earlier in the autumn and you're getting more days like this to get the crops out," he said.

'We were suffering from a little bit of drought'

He said that there was more rainfall during the spring time and dry periods in April and May, resulting in the farm suffering from a little drought.

"The spring crops, if we didn't get them in time, were suffering from drought and the winter crops are a little bit more drought-tolerant."

He also said that he has adapted by growing more cover crops "to try to get more structure into the soil to retain moisture in these dry periods, but also then not store up as much moisture in the wet periods".

Chopping straw and adding organic fertilisers are other methods he has adopted to help improve the soil.

While this current dry stretch is welcome for grain growers harvesting their winter barley crop, if these extended hot, dry spells become the norm - which climate scientists say is the trend - then it starts to pose a serious risk to not just the quality of crops and soil, but also more broadly to the country's agricultural output.

'There's literally no moisture in it'

Teagasc Crop Specialist Shay Phelan said that there is no moisture in the soil and that it is very difficult to dig.

"There's literally no moisture in it whatsoever... it's completely dry," he said.

"Crops that are trying to grow in that have a deficit of moisture."

Mr Phelan notes that Laois is a particularly dry part of the country now and that other parts of the country are probably not as bad as this, but "they're getting there and this weather's going to hasten that".

"What that means is that you get volatility in the crops or in the production of the crops that we grow," Mr Phelan said.

Between 2-2.5 million tonnes of grain are grown in Ireland each year, and any volatility in growth affects that level.

"We get years when we might get close to 2.5 million, but then there are other years where we get less than 2 million, and that's a very difficult challenge to try and overcome in any given year," Mr Phelan said.

"If we look at what other countries do, they put in infrastructure to try and get over this.

"For the likes of vegetables, potatoes, they use a lot of irrigation, but we don't have any infrastructure here to irrigate crops - other than what we can get nearby in local streams, rivers, or boreholes or whatever it happens to be.

"But we don't have anything in terms of big infrastructure that they would have in other countries."

Despite concerns over changing weather patterns, the opportunity to get the harvest done early and quickly this year is a very welcome one for grain growers.

Tillage incomes have been down in recent years, driven by strong global crop yields that have lowered prices as well as from Irish growers having to compete on the international market where there might not be the same regulatory environment.

The 2025 Teagasc Farm Survey, published at the start of the week, indicated tillage incomes rose last year by around a third.

However, Clive Carter - who is also a member of the Irish Grain Growers' Group - said that this does not tell the full story.

"This is the fourth year in a row of a real struggle for farmers - usually you might get one or two bad years but this has been a tough run for the tillage industry."

He said that international prices are very low now and Ireland is not being rewarded for what is produced.

The native grains are almost discounted in comparison to the imports, he said, impacting competitiveness.

"Here we have a carbon neutral crop of oats, and there's someone able to land it at the port all the way from deforested land in South America and we're told you have to compete with that," he said.

"We've extra regulations every year, extra hoops to jump through and it's just becoming unsustainable and unbearable for farmers to try to compete on a global scale when we have this positive image but we just won't get rewarded for it," Mr Carter added.