Tommy is a tillage farmer in east Wicklow. He grows a range of winter and spring cereals, along with oilseed rape, beans, maize and fodder beet as break crops.
He opted for a partial tillage conversion into organic farming on 1st January 2023, and has just under 17ha in conversion. For the 2023 harvest, this consisted of spring oats, winter barley and red clover.
Going forward, he hopes to use red clover to build his soil fertility and reduce his wild oat and broad-leaved weed population. Other crops under consideration are combination crops and spring oats for the expanding organic animal feed market. He also intends growing pea/bean intercrops to provide an Irish grown source of protein for the organic animal feed market
Tommy also buys in store lambs every year and finishes them on stubble turnips. He hopes to continue to do this on catch crops grown on the organic area of his farm.
Making the transition to organic farming has been a little easier for Tommy, given that historically, he imported large quantities of organic manures for his tillage crops, particularly poultry layers manure and cattle slurry. This would have replaced large amounts of chemical fertiliser over the years, while still maintaining yields and building soil fertility. He hopes to continue using a combination of imported cattle slurry and more recently organic approved poultry pellets to provide adequate nutrition to his organic crops.
Tommy’s soil fertility is at optimum level for pH, P and K. Should the next few years go well, his plan would be to increase the area farmed organically.
