The second day of the National Ploughing Championships got underway in brilliant sunshine at Ratheniska, Co Laois this morning and it is on track to attract the biggest attendance of the three-day event.
Day one attracted the biggest opening crowd ever with 82,000 people attending, and National Ploughing Association managing director Anna May McHugh she said she would be surprised if figures did not reach 87,000 or 88,000 today.
There was a queue of about 30 people at the ATMs at 9am this morning, just one hour after the gates had opened. “People came in extremely early this morning,” she said. “There were very long queues at the ticket offices.”
Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney is meeting farmers around the site today and Tánaiste Joan Burton is expected in the afternoon.
Earlier, Mr Coveney launched a new farm safety awareness campaign by Embrace Farm, a support group set up for people affected by farm deaths and accidents.
Embrace Farm has produced the first in a series of video testimonies about the impact of a farm death on the family. The testimony centres on the fall-out following the death of Offaly U-21 hurling manager Dermot Hogan this summer.
Embrace Farm founder Brian Rohan, whose father Liam died in a farm accident, said the videos would show what was left behind after a farm death.
“What’s left behind is awful, make no mistake about it and it’s essentially across two strands,” he said. “There’s the terrible emotional pain that is so obvious but then there’s the huge practical pain that many people don’t see, of who picks up the pieces. Who farms the farm when the farmer dies? This presents huge problems to families and is something farmers need to consider.”
Mr Coveney has been asked about the beef price crisis as he has been making his way around the Ploughing Championships’ site.
Earlier he told reporters that beef was “a huge priority” for him.
“It’s the heartbeat of the rural economy - 100,000 of the 130,000 farm families get some income from beef so we need the beef sector to be functioning and working. We need a healthy suckler herd and we always need to improve the quality of beef coming from our dairy herd,” he said.
“But every year won’t be good in terms of price and we need to ensure that the industry can manage that in difficult years and benefit in the good years.”
