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Enable Conservation Tillage Project Crop Walks

Enable Conservation Tillage Project Crop Walks

Enable Conservation Tillage (ECT) Project Crop Walks will take place over the next couple of weeks on various farms across the country. The first of these is on Wednesday 1st June at 9.30 am on the farm of Gareth Culligan, Stabannon, Co. Louth. Find out more about ECT and details of the walks here

The walks will look at grass-weeds in various establishment systems and also the best practice to get best results in these establishment systems.

All walks start at 9:30am.

See dates and venues below

Date Time Host Address
Wed, 1st June 9:30am Gareth Culligan Stabannon, Co. Louth. Eircode: A91 CC84
Thurs, 2nd June 9:30am Michael Grace Donadea, Co. Kildare. Eircode: W91 A004
Tues, 7th June 9:30am Simon Neville Blackwater, Co. Wexford. Eircode: Y21 DH92
Tues, 14th June 9:30am Bill Shanahan Kilmacthomas, Co. Waterford. Eircode: X42 R273
Wed, 15th June 9:30am Adam Goodwin Castledermot, Co. Kildare. Eircode: R14 FX59

Enable Conservation Tillage (ECT Project)

ECT Project is a European Innovation Partnership (EIP) co-funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2020.

 Teagasc set up the Enable Conservation Tillage project which is

  • a co-innovation model, funded by the Department of Agriculture and Marine and is an “European Innovation Partnerships” initiative and has set up
  • a network of ten ‘focus farms’ to seek evidence on how site-specific IWM can be more fully implemented at farm level to tackle grass weed problems without excessive reliance on herbicides.
  • with the aim reduce the barriers for farmers to adopt non-plough tillage.
  • the structure of the project maximises farmer to farmer knowledge exchange thus increases the potential for practice adoption 

Objective

The overall objective of the project is: 

  • to enable the adoption of conservation agriculture practices on Irish tillage farms.
  • providing growers with the knowledge skills and capacity to achieve effective grass weed control. View Identification and Biology of grass weeds 

The project aims to achieve this objective by: 

  • providing growers with the knowledge skills and capacity to achieve effective grass weed control.

The project will also:

  • capture farmer knowledge locally using Focus Farms.
  • Set up comparison trials (Validation Areas)on these farms to measure the effect of different interventions using establishment and weed control techniques.
  • assess the level and nature of herbicide resistance.
  • optimise the use of existing herbicides.
  • prioritise farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange. 

Read more about the background to this project at Enable Conservation Tillage (ECT)