01 March 2024
Events: my take home message
Teagasc’s researchers attend many events throughout the year, sharing the findings from their research with national and international audiences. Here, we capture the take-home messages – key pieces of information that our researchers want people to remember – from recent events.
Farmers central to sustainable uplands
Event: Upland Farming and Landscape Management Symposium, Westport, County Mayo
Date: 16 November 2023
Attendees at a talk by Catherine Keena, Countryside Management Specialist at Teagasc
Upland farming systems that prioritise sustainability offer numerous social, economic, and environmental advantages. The Upland Farming and Landscape Management Symposium, organised by Teagasc in partnership with the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) from Northern Ireland, focused on addressing the sector’s challenges and exploring its opportunities.
The symposium centred on four main themes Carbon, Water, Biodiversity, and Livestock and brought together farmers, advisors, researchers, scientists, policymakers and community organisations involved in farming, managing and utilising upland landscapes.
Throughout the day, a consensus was reached among several panellists that farmers provide a multitude of ecosystem services and should be duly compensated for these contributions to the public. Catherine Keena, Countryside Management Specialist at Teagasc, stresses: “Farmers are pivotal in the uplands as proper management is essential to unlock their full potential. The adaptability and responsiveness of farmers to policy drivers and incentives is key.” Catherine also emphasises the crucial role played by agricultural advisors in assisting farmers with the adoption of best practices and the development of farming systems.
Stan Lalor, Director of Knowledge Transfer in Teagasc, expressed his observations on the optimistic outlook displayed by farmers and other stakeholders regarding the sustainability and advancement of upland farming systems. Stan says: “Substantial progress has been made in fostering collaborative initiatives to develop these farming systems, the importance of policy and results-based incentives in providing support is hugely important.”
(Text credit: Ivan Kelly)
[pic credit] Michael Mc Laughlin
Unlocking the potential of protein crops
Event: Teagasc National Tillage Conference, Kilkenny
Date: 31 January 2024
Attendees at the National Tillage Conference
The success of the Irish dairy industry is largely due to its ability to take milk and produce a whole host of products that later form the building blocks of other food products, but are there opportunities for the tillage sector to achieve similar results?
As part of the U-Protein project, Teagasc researchers are identifying and refining the key technologies used in the dairy industry, along with developing new practices, to achieve similar results in the plant protein space.
Speaking recently at Teagasc’s National Tillage Conference, Mark Fenelon, Head of Food Programme at Teagasc, spoke about the alternative ingredients made from crops – particularly grains and legumes – and recent investments at Teagasc to create value-added products for use in the food industry.
As it stands, Irish protein crops are predominately used in the animal feed and specialist fresh/frozen spaces, but there is an opportunity to unlock potential markets through the production of protein flour for use in baked products and protein isolate as an ingredient in many foods.
“We have developed a new process at Moorepark and Ashtown, where we can fractionate different plants. We have looked at optimising this and the effect of the process and the functionality of the ingredients,” Mark says.
This process has allowed for the development of a nutritional base that food businesses can rehydrate and later build a product on. Faba beans have already been fractionated to produce a high protein isolate, which can be used in high-end value nutritional products.
“The key is not to disregard the rest of the products,” Mark adds. “We can take the protein out but we also need to take the starch and fibre; all have different qualities. When you put all of them together the business model is much more favourable.”
(Text credit: Sean Cummins)
[pic credit] Finbarr O’Rourke
Don’t miss out on Teagasc’s upcoming events! Visit our website to see what we have planned: www.teagasc.ie