Johnstown Castle Open Day - Technologies for farms of the future

Technologies for Today & Tomorrow

Tuesday, 30th August   |   Johnstown Castle  |  10am

The event is free to attend - booking is recommended.
Time: The venue at Johnstown Castle will open at 10am and close at 4pm. 

What will farms of the future look like?

This open day in Teagasc Johnstown Castle will demonstrate technologies and practices that can be adopted on farms to help to maintain farm productivity and profitability, while increasing overall environmental sustainability. Get up to date on the latest practices and tools to help improve your farming business and to support your farm in meeting future challenges.

What will you see?

Grass Clover and Multispecies swards
New information for successful management of grass-clover and multi-species swards under winter and spring calving dairy and dairy calf-to-beef systems will be available.

Fertiliser and Slurry Technologies
Get the latest information on fertiliser and slurry technologies for increasing nutrient efficiency and grass growth, reducing gaseous emissions, enhancing carbon sequestration and soil health.

Biodiversity and Water Quality
Practices to enhance on-farm biodiversity, including hedgerow management will be demonstrated. Find out what your hedges are doing for climate change by storing carbon.  Practical steps will be shown to reduce losses of valuable nutrients from the soil and the ASSAP programme advisors will be on hand to discuss practical methods to protect water quality on your farm.

Dairy and dairy-beef systems
Dairy cow nutrition for winter milk production will be discussed, as well as lessons learned from the Green Acres and DairyBeef500 programmes. Benchmarks for measuring the efficiency of, and the economic and environmental performance of dairy and dairy-beef production systems will be presented. 

The Signpost Programme
Learn about the Signpost programme, a multi-annual campaign to lead climate action by all Irish farmers. The programme aims to achieve early progress in reducing gaseous emissions from Irish agriculture, and also improve water quality, maintain and improve biodiversity, reduce costs and create more profitable and sustainable farming enterprises.  It is a collaborative programme, led by Teagasc and includes over 100 Signpost farmers, all relevant industry partners, and state bodies.

Teagasc Advisory and Education
Teagasc advisory services will be on hand to discuss how the new agri-environmental scheme, organic farming scheme, or forestry scheme may fit into support your farm business. The next generation of farmers can also find out what education and training opportunities are on offer. 

Machinery Demonstration
See the latest relevant machinery to aid farmers reduce their reliance on artificial nitrogen fertiliser. Teagasc, in partnership with the Irish Farmers Journal, will lead demonstrations of the latest low emission slurry spreading equipment, methods and machinery for over-sowing clover into existing grass swards and the steps to calibrate fertiliser spreaders to accurately apply protected urea and other products.

Visit the Teagasc Environment Research Centre, Johnstown Castle, Co. Wexford on Tuesday, 30^th August to see the Technologies to help you ‘Farm for a Better Future’.