Are you a member of teagasc?..

exercise is the antidote

Thinking of joining?..

Conmaicne Mara

Teagasc member here. STAP facilitator, and filling out SFP, that's about it, costs me €300 a year which considering the €825 STAP and €1,800 SFP I get I consider expensive.

One thing to note very carefully, not all Teagasc advisors are on the ball. Some have given very poor advice in the past in thsi area. That said, there are also very good advisors.

My advice is if you know of on the ball farmers, ask if they're members and do your research into the good advisors that way.

moy83

I think Con is on tue money with his reply . The father was using a dinosaur from teagasc and paying 500 a year . I swopped to a private lad then that charged aroud 100 to return the maps and do the sfp forms . He knows his stuff and is up to speed with most things . Now if I could get the father to implement the advice I would be flying it !

munkus

Private here, does SFP and reps for 300. Tried to join Teagasc and they said they were full. Auld lad had a clown of an advisor for years before he left them.

kevthegaff

i joined teagasc last year for the young dairy farmer scheme for one year only, i get my advice from here, friends and my brother(ag) who is better than most advisors

Miname

There has been good ones and bad ones here over the years and i have to say that at the moment im delighted with the lad i have. In saying that though you need to keep them on the ball and maake them earn their money. In the btap here and i think one runs with the other to an extent for a little more benefit.

epfff

Was a member
Had very poor adviser so left them

Sam Kade

I left them a long time ago when they were advising dairy farmers to give up dairying. I do the sfp online since as it is straight forward. I had a private advisor for reps and he is still giving advice at no charge even though reps is long gone

Username John

Hello,

I was a member there for a while. But I found that I wasnt really getting the value out of it. The advisor I had, whilst very nice, didnt know anything about sheep. I had access to others within Teagasc, via email which was handy as I could email any queries or the like. But I find that boards is as handy to get the same level of information, well, boards is often better as you get a balanced / different views, which is better IMO.

I didnt have any visit, even though I was a member for 2 years (I think you are allowed one visit per year) Which could have been useful (even if only from a how to grow more grass perspective, and not a sheep perspective)

The final straw for me, when they told me that they were running STAP, but they would only be run 9 - 5, no meeting outside of these times. :mad:

But... after all that... I wouldnt mind joining again, if I could only justify it. :P

I would like to get the profit monitor done. I didnt do this previously, and I think the reason was, I didnt push them enough to do it / to help me do it. So I guess as a previous poster said, you need to push them to get the value from em.

Timmaay

Can't complain in the slightest about Teagasc myself. Our discussion group is very useful, the PM meeting probably was the most important 2hrs of my farming year, really opened up my eyes. My adviser usually gets out afew times a year, he is happy to do a grass walk if I need an outside opinion, then likes of soil sampling, silage testing, and other things like fodder/fertilizer budgets etc.

Conmaicne Mara

There hasn't been a Teagasc advisor on my farm since doing up my first REPS3 plan in 2004 I believe. None have expressed any interest in coming out for a look either. I believe it should be mandatory for an advisor to visit the farm, NOT the house, at least once a year. Maybe farmers would be getting better advice if their advisor had a notion of the farm they were farming.