Grass growth rebounds in 2025

As measured by farmers using PastureBase Ireland, grass production increased to an average of 13.2 tonnes dry matter per hectare in 2025, a considerable rebound on the quantities grown in 2024 and 2023.

As published in the recent Teagasc Achievements 2025: Progress with Innovation, Sustainability and Technical Performance in the Agri Food sector, 2025 was a good grass growing year with 13.2 T DM/ha grown on average across the country. After a reduction in 2023 and 2024 it is reassuring to see a return to previous growth rates in 2021 and 2022. Some counties were affected by low moisture availability in the summer, particularly the south and southeast of the country. However, autumn growth allowed most farms to catch up on grass growth.

Figure 1: Annual average grass growth on PastureBase Ireland 2020 – 2025 (PastureBase)

Table 1: A comparison of grass growth by season (2025 versus 2024)

Decision support tools

PastureBase Ireland has developed into a crucial measurement and reporting tool for farmers. While grass measurement is still the main focus of PastureBase, the uptake of extra decision support tools is apparent.

In 2025 over 272,500 nutrient applications were recorded across the grazing season. At peak milk supply over 2,000 farmers had milk data coming into their PastureBase account directly from their milk supplier.

Key figures:

• 7,000 farms on PBI
• >150,000 grass covers uploaded in 2025
  • 38% of these covers are uploaded through the offline mobile application
• 272,508 fertiliser applications uploaded to PastureBase Ireland in 2025
  • 149,112 from the offline mobile application
  • 123,396 from the website
• Extra features/decision support tools: MoSt Grass Growth Prediction Model, farm mapping, Nitrogen Use Efficiency % calculator, fodder available budget, grass budget

Other tools such as the rotation planners and grass budget are being used on farm to extend the grazing season. The fodder available budget is providing a simple way for farmers to monitor the amount of fodder available, making them more resilient to any grass shortages over the grazing season. PastureBase also provides useful reporting tools for farmers to analyse and improve on their year-to-year performance on annual tonnage, nutrient applications and nitrogen use efficiency.

Along with grass budgeting and measuring functionality, farm milk sales data is also supplied to PastureBase Ireland by dairy processors Arrabawn, Aurivo, Bandon, Barryroe, Centenary, Dairygold, Drinagh, Kerry, Lakeland, Limerick Liquid Milk Producers, Lisavaird, North Cork and Tirlan for farmers who opted in on PastureBase. Additional farm data was supplied by Met Eireann, FBA laboratories, JENQUIP and True North Technologies (17 data sources – Tipperary Co Op now supply through ArraTipp).