Ireland, forty shades of green and a few shades of Guinness. As with last time I visited, beautiful country and wonderful people. The flight from Canada was a bit of a bugger, first of all they won't turn the lights out because they wanted to feed us dinner, then two hours later they woke us up to feed us breakfast. Just thinking about food, I must note how good of a 'doer' I am on good pasture. I've gained 7 kg in 5 weeks, despite running almost every second day.

Met at Dublin airport by John Garrity (Nuffielder) aka the Mad Professor. John just had the best laugh, and of course raced us off to the Pub for a Guinness. John is a nutritional agronomist who organized the next few days for us- great guy, showed us some the ways Irish arable farmers are working towards coping with declining subsides over the next few years. Some of the huge yields increases they are achieving possibly shows how farming practice had depended on the subsidies in the last deacde. I hope the Irish guys reading this don't take offence, I reckon that the best farmers and graziers, the ones we saw, are the ones that will survive and make ultimately very successful businesses.

Rob, Garry and I agreed that Irish girls are some of the prettiest in the world. Now having said that, I had better qualify this by saying that all of our friends could be Irish!! Political correctness has also reached here, of all places. Ireland no longer has beauty pageants, it has Personality Contests. We attended a Young Farmers dinner, where we met a local girl who had won a significant such contest, and at 6'1", long dark hair etc etc. , we were highly impressed with her amazing personality! Anyway, that 'Young Farmers' night we met a great deal of young people, almost none of whom were farmers- a bit symbolic of how agriculture is going around the world.

We met with the editor of the Irish Farm Journal who was able to give us a great overview of agriculture. It contributes only a small portion of GDP and thus only has the small ear of government. Looking at their beef industry, over 60% of farmers only have less than 49 head, however Ireland covers its beef needs by 820%, average farm size 32 ha. That reminds me, Garry had rung a Welsh Nuffielder John Yeomans about visiting him.Garry (from Broken Hill @ 120,000 acre farm) asked John how many days it would take to look over his farm. John, being able to see all of his place out the kitchen window or some such thing, told Garry he was going to borrow a few of his neighbour's farms to add to his own on the farm tour!! Anyway, back to Ireland, average farm income numbers suggest the top 1/3 of cattle producers achieve a Gross Margin of Euro 478/ha, of which Euro 472/ha is the average Single Farm Payment(SFP)! Fairly scary profitability?? The SFP is calculated as a percentage of an average of three years production and is tied to satisfying 18 environmental conditions. The more restrictive of these are no hedge removal, no spreading of manure on weekends and public holidays etc. Basically the 'new' rural dwellers (spreading urbanization) actually dictates rural activities. I wonder how long before this might impact on Australia to this degree. The SFP is due to phased out by 2013.

The dairy industry here is basically at large number of farmers-owned co-operatives which deliver milk right to supermarket shelf. These co-operatives are represented by the Irish Co-operatives Organizations Society (IOCS) whom we met with. The message we received here was that getting rid of subsidies is what farmers have to plan for, but their charter is to try and slow the process down as much as possible! This is getting a little long, but that is the problem of sitting around in airports all day. Picture me, huddled up to a pillar with a powerpoint to recharge my laptop. bored out of my tiny mind.

From there down to stay with David(Nuffielder) and Yvonne Kerr, Dave's parents George and Olive, and Jane Smith(Nuffielder). Dave has a very impressive dairy operation, not because of size- 'cause he has 56ha and 50 cows- but because he is making the operation profitable outside of the SFP. I guess the thing to understand for Australians is that scaling up is very difficult. Average land value is Euro 16,000/ha (AUD$40,000/ha) and only small holdings become available at any one time(if you could manage interest in a sector that is lucky to breakeven with subsidies), and a 'Nitrates Directive' which prohibits intensification of say, barn fed dairying in the US style because every operation has to have a certain amount of land per beast to spread slurry/manure on. Had a brilliant time with David and Yvonne and Jane, hope that we will be able to return the favour some time.

Next visit to a farm that has taken on crushing rapeseed oil for use directly in diesel engines. Engines will need to be modified but sounds like a simple way to start a bio-fuel facility at farm level. - Joey, you reading this? www.rapoleum.com Products also include rape cake for feed-sales price Euro160/t. Cost of oil production Euro 0.64/litre.

Fintan Grimes(Nuffielder) then looked after us for a couple of days- Off to the Bord Bia (Irish Food Board) for whom he works. They basically promote and develop markets for Irish produce. Good bloke Finty Cents- we had met earlier in the year in Holland and China. The Bord Bia blokes didn't admit organizing it, but we heard of a great technique to encourage supermarkets to 'buy Irish'. 40 or so dairy farmers would randomly turn up at supermarkets, fill the bottom of their trolleys with frozen food, top that with heavy items and 1 milk container. At the checkout they would ask "Oh, isn't this milk from Ireland? Well, I'm not going to do my shopping here!" and walk off, leaving the staff to try and empty 40 odd trolleys before the frozen food melted! Funnily enough, the supermarket chain quoted soon saw the error of its ways.

Of to a chook farm which also processed and delivered its eggs. Contracted in free range eggs and grew their own caged bird eggs. Terrific bloke Dermot, with a wonderful laugh. I felt he was a little exposed to cheap foreign imports, but the eat Irish sentiment seems to be holding up in his favour. Most of these visits necessitated a visit to the 'local' for a Guinness to discuss things in depth. Couple more visits, one to a sheep farm - Garry and Rob were over the moon to actually see some sheep - almost a Kiwi type reaction!! Second last farm visit to Dave McElrea(Nuffielder) who is composting green waste from councils. He was also promoting a water heater that would burn 9 tonne of barley(or any grain) keeping your house warm all year! Last visit to Steve Houston- current northern Ireland Nuffielder and Dairy farmer. He has worked for James Mulligan at Moree in the past on cotton so had a good natter about that.

I dropped the other three off at Belfast airport for them to wander onto France for 3 days while I drove down to Dublin to catch up with Michelle Naughton, Gill (nee Rooney) and families. Had a great time catching up with these families who were so good to me last time I was over here. Of course the last night turned into a fair session on Australian wine and all sorts of beer so here I am sitting in Heathrow airport with a slight headache.

Now I am off to Morocco and Spain for three weeks before flying back to the UK. Plans a little hazy from there but am planning to catch up with as many of the Nuffield Scholars I have met this year as possible. I hope to chase down a few Young Farmers groups (Louise, Nicola- help please) help and quiz them on water use issues, especially in some of the west and south of the country which is a little dryer than the normal. Rach and Ed, I'm coming to see you guys as well. I want to slip over to Germany and chase up some of the research into diesel motors burning vegetable oil as well before heading to the US.