Northern Ireland can compete strongly with many of its European neighbours when it comes to the growing of grass, according to experts from Barenbrug.

Attending a recent meeting of Fermanagh Grassland Club, David Johnston from AFBI which is jointly funded by DARD and Barenbrug and Rien Louwes, a Forage Product Manager with Barenbrug, highlighted the challenges and opportuntiies fro grassland farmers in Northern Ireland.

Rien Louwes in his presentation, looked at grassland farming across Europe.

In Estonia, there are very large farms run by companies side by side with small family farms where there is a lack of knowledge. Legumes are mostly grown, along with red clover with the main grass species being Fescue.

In the Ukraine, where summers are very dry, the good black soil quality retains moisture. The mostly big farms grow lucerne and mostly grown for hay production. Farmers can take up to four cuts a year from lucerne and alfalfa without fertiliser.

Rien says Barenbrug are trying to produce grasses which are drought resistant.

Visiting Russia, Rien said there are extremely large farming units capable of managing between 250 to 10,000 cows but with high production costs especially with labour. They need winter hardy grasses such as tall Fescue and Timothy as well as Meadow Fescue and Cocksfoot. On many farms there is one farm worker for every 10 cows.

He has seen one farm with 120,000 hectares producing beef. On this farm, there are between 50,000-60,000 beef cows and they grow all their own concentrates. The farm has a huge fleet of tractors and machinery with up to 30 round balers alone.

Rien said a lot of these farms produce seven to eight tonnes of Dry Matter per hectare but in some southern European countries, there is a much higher output system, where there is more than 20 tonnes of Dry Matter per hectare although there are high inputs. Irrigation is needed on annual ryegrasses in these areas.

In other countries such as Holland, Germany and Denmark, farms are usually stocked with between 80-100 cows at a stocking rate of two cows per hectare with high milk production of 9,000-10,000litres but requiring high inputs. Ryegrasses are grown for grazing while Tall Fescue which is high yielding and late heading is used for silage making.

Establishing grasses differs across Europe too with ploughing favoured in most western European countries and mostly discing in Eastern Europe.

When questioned by farmers, Rien explained how cows would eat in order of preference; Tetraploid ryegrasses, Diploid ryegrasses, Timothy and Tall Fescue. Young ryegrass is more efficient at taking nitrogen out of the soil.