The Irish Protein Stakeholders Group have produced and published a strategic plan to support the growing of native protein crops. The Plan was launched yesterday, Thursday, 9 December by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue TD.

The target set out by the Teagasc convened group is to support farmers to produce 130,000 tonnes of indigenous protein crops from 20,000 hectares in Ireland by 2030.

In launching the Strategic Plan, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue, T.D., welcomed the production of this plan by the Protein Stakeholders Group.

Minister McConalogue stated “I am delighted to be able to launch the protein strategy and I am pleased that the targets of the strategy are very much aligned with my Department’s proposed CAP Strategic Plan to double the area grown to protein crops to 20,000 hectares.”

“I firmly believe in the long-term viability the tillage sector and I am convinced there is massive untapped potential within the tillage sector. I am committed to supporting the growing of indigenous protein crops through the next CAP with a proposed increase in funding for the Coupled Voluntary Protein Aid Scheme from the current €3 million per annum to €7 million per annum. Growing the area under Protein Crops is a win-win for our industry; it offers a support for tillage farmers and can play a huge role in reducing our dependence on imported crops.”

The group, which has representatives from the agricultural industry, farmers, Teagasc and The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) outlined three key strategies to achieve their goal:

Farmer profitability - Improving farm profitability from protein crops versus other crops through variety improvement, better agronomic practices and bridging knowledge gaps.
Creating demand - Create a positive market environment for indigenous protein crops by establishing their nutritional credentials and demonstrating to livestock producers the advantages of substituting imported proteins.
Sustainability - Create a greater recognition of the sustainability credentials of native grown protein crops to achieve climate change and biodiversity targets by the displacement of imported protein sources.

Irish Protein Stakeholders Group

The Irish Protein Stakeholders Group intend to launch an initiative called ‘Benchmarking Beans for Yield Improvement’ next spring. The aim of Benchmarking Beans for Yield Improvement is to determine the key agronomic practices used to achieve the highest yielding crops and to use these crops as a benchmark for other farmers, for overall yield improvement.

Minister McConalogue highlighted the benefits of increasing native production of protein crops from climate change, environmental and biodiversity viewpoints and which will greatly contribute to Ireland’s sustainability credentials. He also outlined the advantages of protein crops from an economic viewpoint to the tillage farmer. The Minister complimented the group of stakeholders which included all links in the protein crop chain from the farmer, seed industry, advisory, DAFM right through to the feed industry and believed that this approach will greatly enhance the chances of the group’s targets being met.

Michael Hennessy, Head of Crop Knowledge Transfer Department in Teagasc said; “Irish tillage farmers have responded to the challenges of producing more Irish grown protein crops and will continue to rise to the challenge. The animal feed market will be the largest customer of protein grains, however developing higher value food market is a priority to add value to protein grains and farmers’ incomes.”

Group member Liam Leahy from Dairygold said; “as a company we would be delighted to see the protein crop area increasing into the future where we can comfortably use up the 4 times our current supply as we find them an ideal crop to work with both with tillage and livestock farmers.”

Irish Protein Stakeholders Group strategic plan to support protein production is available here or on the Teagasc website at https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/crops/break-crops/beans/ .

Industry view

Commenting on the news of additional supports by the Department for producing indigenous protein crops by 2030, Tim O'Donovan, Technical Director, Seedtech, and a member of the Irish Protein Stakeholders Group, said "the first area to be addressed to reach this target would be to improve farmer profitability from protein crops, and the DAFM are supporting this with this initiative.

“The benefits of beans are well known but have never been more needed than now on Irish tillage farms.

"With nitrogen fertiliser costs doubling recently, a crop that makes its own nitrogen (and leaves a bag for next year's crop) is a gift.

"Added to this, the fact that beans can be easily fed instead of imported soya and are an excellent food source for pollinating insects makes you wonder why more beans are not grown", said Tim.

“Bean yields on farms have been variable, but this DAFM Protein Subsidy should balance that out and help profitability.

Farmers can include beans in their rotation with the added assurance that the Protein Subsidy will be available for a number of years.

This reassurance allows farmers to plan for the best utilisation of beans on tillage farms. For example, farmers can plan to follow beans with a nitrogen hungry crop like winter wheat, a seed crop or even a high margin crop like gluten-free oats (if contracts permit).

Having a Protein Subsidy Scheme gives assurances to the whole industry, so end-users and feed merchants can plan to include beans in animal rations and even develop higher value markets for human use.”

Bean trials in Ireland

Seedtech has been involved in beans since the 1970s when they brought the first modern varieties to Ireland.

Field Beans are an excellent break-crop, as it is an N-fixing legume, which benefits the next cereal crop in rotations.

Since then, Seedtech has been trialling bean varieties on their research farm at Faithlegg, Waterford, looking at variety development to achieve yield stability through better drought tolerance, disease resistance, and selection for desirable traits for premium markets.

Tim said that their research is focused on delivering varieties with a consistent yield at farm level - not too easy considering LYNX yielded 8.8 t/ha across the 5 DAFM trial sites in 2021!

Lynx is the leading bean variety, topping the DAFM trials since 2017 and is grown in 4 out of 5 bean fields in Ireland.

Research continues to quantify the positive effects of incorporating beans into long-term crop rotations in terms of nitrogen reduction in succeeding crop, soil fertility, and yield improvement across the rotation and lower pest pressure.

Seedtech has introduced novel genetics in recent years like Victus, a low vicine convicine bean variety and Taifun, a zero-tannin variety.

These specialist varieties offer the end-user better utilisation of beans in animal diets and human diets.

Seedtech also supported Teagasc Feed Research of faba beans as part of our participation in the EU funded project Legumes Translated.eu .

The key finding from this trial was that beans could fully replace soya in finished pig diets and other work with Adesco looking at commercial feeding of pigs found that inclusion of faba beans would half the carbon footprint in the pig diet.

"This DAFM Protein Subsidy is a very good use of public funds as the Protein Subsidy will tip the balance in favour of the bean and increase the production of protein crops here in Ireland", concluded Tim.

For more information on Seedtech’s Bean Research and Policy Development see here.