Ireland – Heavy machinery in danger of getting stuck in waterlogged fields

By Robert On July 16, 2012 · 3 Comments

Weather to deteriorate later in week.

The Irish Farmers’ Association said the bad weather was the only topic of conversation in the countryside. Some farmers got a window of opportunity to make silage at the weekend but conditions are still very difficult, with heavy machinery in danger of getting stuck in waterlogged fields.

IFA president John Bryan called on Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney to use today’s EU Farm Council meeting in Brussels to get help for farmers.

“While some harvesting has been done, ground conditions have prevented many farmers from getting their silage in,” said Bryan.

“Crop development is at a critical stage for the main crops of winter wheat and spring barley. Grain farmers expect yields to drop and unless we see a dramatic improvement in the coming weeks the impact could be greater.”

Unfortunately, the weather is expected to deteriorate later in the week.

See entire article:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0716/1224320204385.html

Thanks to Juergen Uhlemann for this link

3 Responses to Ireland – Heavy machinery in danger of getting stuck in waterlogged fields

LaoisWeather says:

July 16, 2012 at 7:17 pm

As a Met Office climatological observer in the south Irish midlands, I can confirm all this to be true. Its cold and wet here most of the “summer” so far. This is the sixth-in-a-row poor summer. All wet and rather cool.

We are recording lots more cooler than average months now than before… We used to compare data to the 1961-1990 period up to June 2012… even using that dataset some recent months were coming in below average… now that the 1981-2010 dataset is used, it seems nearly every month is cool!!!

Please send us some sunshine!!!
laurel says:

July 17, 2012 at 3:46 am

nasty for the farmers and the animals, silage making is an art, and very dependent on the right moisture content, too much and all sorts of things happen, either a mound of rotting vegetation of in some events toxic bacteria and dead animals. lets hope they can save some. shipping hay in from elsewhere? in this case elsewhere may be europe..and they arent doing so well either:-(
SteveSadlov says:

July 18, 2012 at 7:45 pm

I’ll write it: Global famine.