Climate Bolloxolgy.

The food we import is cheaper to produce elsewhere...Its very simple

I doubt that there’s ever been a wheat breeding facility in Ireland. There’s a multiplication industry that trial and multiply wheats from Denmark, Germany, France and the UK. Funny that the investment was never made, especially in wheats which is a notorious bad traveler…a variety that grows well in one parish can be a disaster in another parish. Now Irish growers are having to deal with varieties that are suitable to completely different climate and growing conditions…and yet they can achieve yields that are some of the best in the world.

The importance of the tillage sector in Ireland is summed up perfectly by the article below…it makes for better ‘sustainability’ for other sectors. The tillage sector has suffered decades of neglect by the Government and the ‘Independent’ research authority.

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/imports-of-big-three-grains-decrease-in-2021-680606

I think it was UCD had a heritage wheat and barley field program on an organic farm in Wexford.

I was at an open day there pre Covid. Now they were small plots. But there was a large variety of strains.

Some of the seed companies here, their reps were having a peek on the day. Very interesting looking at the varieties. Most totally different looking to modern treated varieties.

Edit: The greatest threat to the Irish tillage farmer came from the seed companies and merchants here and patents and licensing and taking the power and control away from the farmer in growing and selling their seed. On the day it was discussed that previously a field could have 40 varieties of corn. All home saved and used year after year. Good luck doing that nowadays.

An interesting article for this thread

40 years ago had already seen most of the loss of native grain breeds - you would have to go back 70 years plus to get any idea of the variety of native strains in terms of oats etc. I remember older family members mentioning the difference in strains in terms of stem length etc. with shorter varieties grown in parts of the country where wind and rain was more of an issue. Alot of younger folk would be surprised to know how small tillage plots were standard on most farms in places like North Mayo and West Donegal up till the 60's or so. Something interesting I learn't recently was the surprising extent of the tillage sector in Iceland with their own climate adapted Barley etc. strains

Whether you have a diesel car or not, a fuel heater or something... read this :

This is a very good analysis demonstrating that our politicians (and the Greens) are giving us a show:

DIESEL paranoia is only for cars!

Heavyweights, Buses, Ships are excluded!

Just to put the degree of paranoia among the most virulent DIESEL haters, it is necessary to reveal the data from the maritime industry that has shown that considering the size of engines and the quality of fuel used, the 15 plus large cargo ships in the world pollute as much as the world's 760 million cars on the planet.

You know, those containers that feed us products we manufacture in our off-located factories, today burn 10,000 tons of fuel each round trip between Asia and Europe.

These unfortunate 15 ships are part of a fleet of 3,500, to add the 17,500 tankers that make up the 100,000 ships that sail the seas. (view taken on January 10, 2022 at 6pm)

In order not to leave the maritime domain, let's remember that the French pleasure fleet is about 500,000 units, including 5,000 yachts of more than 60 meters, and that the average of these burn about 900 liters of fuel in just one hour, alo rs only 24% of households French people who heat themselves with fuel are struggling to fill their tank for the winter.

To continue on the path of paranoid schizophrenia, let's take into account the entire fishing flotilla and the 4.7 million heavy weights in transit through France.

The thousands of airplanes moving through the sky and whose consumption per passenger and per kilometer traveled is 3 times more harmful to the climate than the automobile. (view taken on January 10, 2022 at 6pm)

To complete this little fable, let's not forget the essential farming area where the average energy consumption is 101 liters of fuel per hectare.

But no panic, the government will definitely save the planet by sticking a new TAX on DIESEL vehicles only... and weaken our automobile industry a little further, which will increase unemployment in the process...

As you well know, by paying a TAX on petrol, it will not pollute anymore... unless you think you're really stupid .

This also proves that "newspapers" are bought by power to brainwash us.

Passing it on is free !!!

"Energy prices through the roof... ...Not one brown penny off the electricity bill"

I’m talking well before Norman, Goldspear etc. I remember those varieties well, like it was yesterday. Before Norman etc there wasn’t any wwheat, down south anyway, and semi-dwarfism hadn’t been invented. All that was grown was swheat and it’d grow to 4-6 feet tall…40-55cwt was a good crop. However specs would be much better than they are in modern wheats and a lot of it went for milling.

Norman was a game changer. It was some of the first of the semi-dwarf wwheat. It was a veritable 4 tonner. Any way at all you grew it, 4 ton/ac was réalisable. However with shorter wheats the wheat disease complex quickly became prominent. But these diseases were simply treated with the likes of Carbendazim (MBC), Baleyton cf etc. Nowadays the natural resistance in cereals seems to be non-existant. It’s my argument that these rustic/resistant traits have been bred out of modern wheats. There’s a leading agronomist from the premier seed importers/multiplicators in Ireland calling here for a couple of days this week and of course we will renew the argument. He claims that the natural resistance hasn’t been lost, but the disease strains are evolving to be more resistant to chemicals…he does concede however that due to severe inbreeding of modern varieties, there could be some genetic traits that could possibly help disease resistance, lost. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

30 private planes landed in Shannon over the weekend for jp pro am. Its a bit much now.

Yellow rust is a nasty pathogen. With drier springs etc and more susceptible varieties it poses a significant risk. Once it gets into grasses etc there’s always going to be high disease pressure given the right weather conditions. Even worse the older chemistry that was most effective is now banned. Stem rust is starting to poke its head here and the UK.

In my experience all varieties succumb to yellow rust fairly quickly, but some are definitely very susceptible. It’s one disease that can sweep a crop in a few days. The organic lads find mixing 5+ fairly resistant varieties together to be very helpful.