Sustainable Dairy Farming and the Challenges Ahead

Tom O’Dwyer Head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer at Teagasc, joins Emma-Louise Coffey on this week’s Dairy Edge podcast to detail the challenges that dairy farmers have overcome in the last fifty years. Tom expects sustainability is the biggest challenge that will face farmers over the next decade while dairy cow numbers are set to continue increasing at a modest level. There are a range of technologies that will improve sustainability as well as improve farm efficiency such as higher genetic merit stock, higher grass utilisation, reduced use of chemical nitrogen, switch to protected Urea, incorporation of white clover and low emission slurry spreading. You can hear more about these technologies at the virtual Teagasc National Dairy Conference which is taking place on November 24-25th. For more information and to register for the event, click here: https://www.teagasc.ie/corporate-events/dairy-conference/ For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast visit the show page at: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/