Minister Must Act Immediately on Second Calendar Date
14 October 2009
Chairman of Macra na Feirme’s Agricultural Affairs committee Kieran McEvoy said the Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith’s move to allow earlier ploughing dates was a welcome move but a similar announcement regarding an extension of the slurry spreading dates is required by the Minister by Thursday.
The farming calendar dates set down by the Irish Government need to be scraped from an environmental and economic point of view, they are impractical and are seriously impacting on the real farming calendar and are not in the best interest of the environment’, he said.
Mr. McEvoy said Macra have made a case to the Minister for Agriculture on the grounds that there is strong scientific, environmental and grassland management reason to allow later spreading of slurry/FYM and also weather patterns are changing, we are getting wetter summers and drier winters and the grass growth is maintained into the winter months.
In an extremely difficult year for farmers imposing unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape in the form of unrealistic dates is pure nonsense and this wait and see approach to extending dates is angering farmers, he said.
