Protecting The Soil To Protect The Future
Name:
Tommy Tierney
Location:
Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary
Farm Type:
Tillage and Beef
Participating Schemes:
Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS), ACRES, Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM), Protein Aid Scheme and Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS)
Farm Size:
240 acres at home and 700 acres in total
1. Tommy’s Background
Tommy Tierney is a tillage farmer working on 700 acres of land at the foot of the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary. He combines working in partnership with his parents; Micheál and Pauline, on the farm while also working as a plumber during the quiet periods.
Tommy is a new breed of tillage farmer that is increasingly turning his attention to managing the structure and biological health of his soil to reduce expensive inputs and improve resilience. Tommy also puts more consideration into the interactions of his farm with the wider landscape and the ecosystems that, in turn, interact with his farm.
Two decades ago, the family were primarily raising beef and started to grow grain to provide feed for the cattle. “Over the years the grain has got bigger, and the beef has got smaller,” says Tommy. In fact, today they only keep 20 cattle during the summer months. “I was a lot of the reason for that, I prefer the tillage side of things and I’m often busy with the plumbing. There’s a lot of work with the animals whereas with the tillage, you’re only busy at certain times of the year.”
Tommy has also worked as a Farm Safety Mentor for Co. Tipperary in the recent Farmers4Safety EIP-AGRI project.
2. Healthy Soils Improve Profitability
Tommy would no longer consider his farm to be a typical tillage farm but rather a regenerative agriculture farm, which is a new way of farming here in Ireland even if it is more common in foreign countries. “This journey started since we stopped ploughing (and changed to using a no-till drill) in 2014, and really in 2018 when I joined BASE Ireland. I’m fond of the environment, I’d like to see better water quality and I just find it a better way to farm than the way we were going with high chemical inputs.” BASE Ireland, an organisation of approximately 250 farmers, agronomists and agricultural professionals, is the perfect peer-to-peer learning forum for Tommy to meet and exchange ideas with other like-minded growers.
“I’m fond of the environment, I’d like to see better water quality and I just find it a better way to farm than the way we were going with high chemical inputs.”
The journey to creating healthier soils has been very interesting for him so far. Farmers like Tommy find this way of farming very engaging as there is a high degree of experimentation involved which keeps farming interesting. For every success there is an inevitable failure, but Tommy is learning all of the time and enjoys sharing his experiences with others. “With farm level research, there is bound to be risks, especially the way I do it. I experiment in blocks rather than with whole fields to try out different ideas. It’s been very good so far.”
One example of the risks of experimentation were the storms in 2020 and the effect it had on his barley. A lot of heads were left on the ground in the experimental blocks of barley because of a combination of not enough fungicide being applied and not enough understanding of nutrition and soil biology at the time. “Looking back now though, it was a good year for learning. It’s standing to me now,” Tommy reflects.
“On a year like this, the weather is dictating how crops are doing, but we are insulated from the losses that some other farmers are having because of growing crops a lot cheaper. Every year that we farm this way, we are improving the soil’s health.”
The upside is that he has dramatically improved his soil health and can now grow crops a lot cheaper than in times past. “Even this year now, we’ve been insulated from a lot of the high input costs and can grow the crops cheaper. On a year like this, the weather is dictating how crops are doing, but we are insulated from the losses that some other farmers are having because of growing crops a lot cheaper. Every year that we farm this way, we are improving the soil’s health. When a lot of crops were lodging this year, ours were still standing because we are way back on our chemical nitrogen use.”
3. Changing Cultivation Techniques
Tommy has used the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS) to make his farming system more sustainable by helping to fund the purchase of a GPS controlled fertiliser spreader and sprayer and a no-till drill. The GPS equipment helps to avoid excess applications of chemical fertiliser and spray, of which he plans to apply less of year on year. The drill protects his soils through minimal disturbance at planting time.
Soils are increasingly being recognised for their potential in carbon sequestration and storage in the Irish land-use sector. This practice helps to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Incorporation of straw also improves soil biology, soil friability and improves soil drought resilience thanks to increased water holding capacity. All of these benefits contribute to the financial and environmental sustainability of the tillage sector.
Tommy has a straw chopper on the back of his combine harvester which he follows with a disc cultivator with special low impact discs to incorporate the chopped straw just below the surface of the soil. The biology within the soil then takes care of the rest. This year he has incorporated winter wheat, winter oats and spring barley straw into his soils. For this, Tommy receives an annual payment under the Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM).
Although he does sell a portion of his straw for additional income, the bulk of it is incorporated into the soil. This year he only sold 200 acres of straw out of a total of 700 acres. He samples all of his soils every 3 years to make sure that his carbon and organic matter content levels are increasing year on year. The results speak for themselves in fields where straw has been incorporated for many years. The health of the soils is evident, and the structure is extremely friable. It is a measure that Tommy intends to keep using.
4. Climate Change
Tommy agrees that climate change is affecting his farm just like everybody else. “The weather is getting more extreme. It seems to rain now and forget to stop. A month later you could be in a drought. It might not affect us as much as in other countries, but I can definitely see a difference.”
The value of healthy high carbon soils is that they become a carbon sink rather than an emitter and this helps soils to become more resilient when supporting crops in adverse weather conditions. These measures are improving the environmental and financial sustainability of tillage farms while providing a vital environmental service for the rest of society.
For more information about the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS), please click here.
To find out more about the Straw Incorporation Measure, please click here.
Further information on BASE Ireland can be found here.
5. Image Gallery
