Grasscheck – 23 years of positive impact for N. Ireland farmers

This initiative led by AgriSearch, AFBI and CAFRE, in partnership with DAERA, has monitored year on year variations in grass growth providing valuable information to both farmers and policy makers during this time.

Grazed grass is the cheapest form of feed available for ruminant livestock in Northern Ireland. With grassland accounting for over 90% of the utilised agricultural area of Northern Ireland, good grassland management is critical to the profitability and sustainability of the dairy, beef and sheep sectors helping to lower input costs and increase resilience to increased concentrates prices. Indeed, boosting productivity from grassland has been shown to reduce phosphorus build-up on farms, and grass-fed meat and milk provide a healthier product for the consumer. Grassland also has an important role in sequestering carbon. Work conducted over the past 50 years at AFBI Hillsborough has shown that well managed grassland can sequester over 800kg of Carbon per hectare per year.

Over 23 years the GrassCheck plots at Hillsborough and Greenmount have averaged 11.6tDM/ha (ranging from 9.2 – 13.8t DM/ha). In 2021 the plots yielded 10.9t DM/ha.

See Figure 1. Growth on the GrassCheck plots from 1999 - 2021.

Grass growth in 2021 deviated considerably from the seasonal norm with a cold, dry spring followed by a surge in growth with an extended dry period then causing a considerable downturn in growth during late June and July. As a result of the changing grass growth patterns the 10 year average grass growth curve we will be using in this year’s bulletins has changed considerably from the one used last year. The updated average 10 year average growth has dropped from 12.6t DM/ha to 11.8t DM/ha as we have dropped the good growth figures from 2011 and picked up the impact of frequent droughts in more recent years.

See Figure 2. GrassCheck 2021 Plot Performance.

The impact of the dry weather has become particularly noticeable in the East with County Down growing 20% less grass than County Fermanagh in 2021. During March to October County Down only received 329mm (13 inches) of rain compared to 459mm (18 inches) in Fermanagh.

See Figure 3. Grass production by county.

GrassCheck bulletins will resume next week. Full weekly weather and growth data is available on the AgriSearch website.