Ear to the Ground – Series 30 – Series2
RTÉ’s popular farming and rural affairs programme, Ear to the Ground, continues its groundbreaking 30
th series.
Beet
Darragh Mc Cullough travelled to Meath for the start of this year’s Beet Harvest.
A crop that we used to grow for sugar, we now produce exclusively for feeding to animals. But since we need to reduce our reliance on imported feeds, is there potential to grow more of this crop, both for animal feed and also in the future for feeding Anaerobic Digesters?
Rare native breeds on the spectacular Killua Castle Farm
In 2006 Allen and Lorena Krause began restoring the ruined Killua castle and its 340 acre demesne. With an interest in regenerative farming they started a native rare breeds farm on the grounds five years ago. Under the watchful eye of farm manager Anthony Gilsenen they are producing Irish moiled beef, red deer venison, jacob sheep and wild boar. Helen Carroll visits the Killua Castle Farm to see how the Irish moiled herd are taking to their spectacular surroundings.
Gender Inequality in Farming
On paper, farming in Ireland is very much a male dominated world. Over 70,000 women work on Irish family farms yet only less than 1300 farms cite women as official partners. Ella McSweeney visits two farming women in Limerick who are challenging the status quo – Catherine Quinn and her grand-daughter Hannah-Quinn Mulligan. Catherine grew up the eldest of nine children yet was not considered to inherit the family farm. Journalist and farmer Hannah founded the Women in Agriculture Stakeholders Group to try to redress this gender imbalance.
This season we continue to explore the issues, challenges and opportunities facing Irish farmers and rural
dwellers. Ear to the Ground is produced by indiepics for RTÉ and is broadcast from the 7th of November
through until March.
For more information contact Production Manager, Sylvia Lynch. sylvia.l@indiepics.ie / 01 708 8188