The changing face of farming

When the Celt visits the Mountnugent farm of Emma Cullen the glorious weather that has defined this remarkable spring finally broke.

“Lovely soft rain,” her mam Catherine appraises before we head out the kitchen door to the thirsty fields of Clontyduffy.

Mullaghmeen rises in the distance as Emma wonders aloud if the spitting rain will harm the hefty silverware she’s carrying.

The Myles Smith Memorial Cup is awarded to the Ballyhaise Agricultural College Student of the Year, and this year it belongs to Emma.

She casually observes that hers is the first female name to grace the cup since it was minted. That’s almost half a century ago, back in 1976.

“Put that in your story,” she good naturedly challenges.

That Emma is the first female is rightly a source of pride. She’s a face of change in a sector that is so intrinsic to the Irish identity.

“I wasn’t expecting it. I was only going back to college to get the Green Cert - and genuinely that was my goal. If I got anything else it was a bonus. To have gotten it was an absolute honour to be honest with you, not only for the farm here at home, but as a woman.”

Upon leaving school, Emma was torn between farming and joining the guards. Opting for the latter she enrolled in a security course and worked in St James’ Hospital in Dublin. Taking the next step she submitted an application for An Garda Síochána. However Covid struck and by the time she finally received an acceptance letter a year and a half later, her grá for a life in uniform garda had cooled. Her thoughts had instead turned to helping her father Séan run the farm.

“I was more conscious of him, he’s out there on his own,” says Emma- fourth of five siblings.

“He’s after working 40-plus years of his life in farming and it’s nice to let it [the home farm] continue, and let it grow,” says the 32 year old.

The obligatory Green Cert followed. Eager to give it her all Emma enrolled full-time as a mature student in 2022 and specialised in dairying.

She values the two periods of work placement during the course. In first year she worked with Damien Gilsenan in Munterconnaught.

“I learned so much about the breeding aspect and grass management,” reports Emma.

With Damien she put into practice the grass measurement techniques she learned in the Ballyhaise classroom.

Second year saw Emma work with neighbour Eugene Traynor. “I learned so much from him with regards to synchronisation and breeding, and things to look out for.”

Emma has already brought the grass measurement techniques to the Cullens’ 70-plus acre farm to ensure they select the best fields for grazing and the best for silage. Measurements are uploaded onto Pasturebase, but she is also happy to “eyeball it” too.

“The next thing I’ll be looking at is the actual cow - she’s the one making the money, so how am I going to get the best out of her?”

Strategy

Emma aims to milk record to better identify cows with high somatic cell counts.

“I’ve seen it done on Damien’s farm and over the road in Eugene’s farm, and I’ve seen the benefits of it. So I want to bring that back to our farm.

“I’ll start to milk record this year so next year I’ll be able to breed off my best cows and improve the herd’s EBI that way, and then down the line in two or three years, once I correct them, I’ll probably introduce collars. That will make heat detection that bit better, so you don’t have to sit in a field with binoculars trying to spot the cows that are in heat.”

While she is eager to make gains where she can, Emma holds the work of her father Séan in the highest regard. She has learned so much from him.

“I hope to continue farming and make this farm more sustainable and continue with all the good things that daddy has done, and develop it.”

At dinner time the Cullens’ kitchen table is all go, as contractors are cutting silage.

Emma enjoys the buzz of silage season recalling the puzzled look when colleagues would ask where she was off to on her holidays and her reply would be to cover a silage pit.

Emma’s always had a love for farming, and feels a rebalance is underway with women playing an increasingly central role.

“I remember when I was five or six and being on a tractor going through a town, you’d nearly hide because girls weren’t seen to be in farming and you’d be afraid when you go back to school you’d get slagged.”

While she was awarded Ballyhaise ‘Student of the Year’ at the November graduation, the award put her in the running for the overall Teagasc ‘Student of the Year’ across all campuses. That honour last week went to Waterford’s Kate Curran.

There were five females in Emma’s graduating class of around 30 in the dairying sector. She notes that beef and sheep boasted higher numbers of females.

“It’s an industry that was male dominated, but I can see in the future there will be a lot of women coming up the ranks.”

She adds: “It’ll never be 50-50. It’s not a 9-5 job, it’s a 24/7 kind of job. We are well able for it, not only me but the four others who graduated are testament that we are able for it and you have to just believe in yourself, that you are just as good as anyone else.”

Walking back from the fields Emma points out the nearby site where a new home is gradually taking shape. It’s for Emma and her wife Lauren, who she is deeply grateful to.

“The most important thing for me is to have the family unit. Farming is a lone job, if you don’t have someone to talk to or someone to go back to it can be hard,” says Emma.

“Getting this award, or even [the ceremony] yesterday, it means a lot to have my mother, my father there and my wife Lauren - the support of her family and my family and even the college,” she said, paying tribute to the support of College Principal John Kelly and Assistant College Principal Marianne Lyons. “I’m excited and looking forward to my future in farming.”