THE grain harvest, the best on record, has created a unique problem for grain merchants.
With the national yield expected to exceed 2.1 million tonnes, the merchants are being forced to rent extra storage space for the crop.
According to Mr Seamus Funge of the Cereals Association of Ireland, the industry was caught by surprise in recent weeks when the weather began to improve. "August was terrible from a harvesting point of view and most of us expected that tonnage would be down on last year," he said.
"But the weather came right conditions have proved ideal over the last few weeks and a bumper harvest is almost all saved," he said.
"The national yield had fallen to 1.6 million tonnes after the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1993/1994," he added.
The merchants had not reckoned that this harvest would produce an additional half a million tonnes of grain to be stored.
"They are refurbishing old storage space and in some cases they are being forced to rent stores to cope with the crop," he said.
Teagasc till age specialist Dr Jim O'Mahoney said the 1996 harvest is the best on record, especially for winter wheat and spring barley. "We are discovering that the yields from these two crops are exceptionally good and there is nothing like them in our records at Teagasc, the agriculture and food development authority," he said.
He said that exceptional yields of high quality malting barley with low protein content was also good news for Irish brewers, as this malting barley is much sought after by the trade.
He added that while yields were well up on last year the financial rewards for their bumper crop may not be as high for the cereal farmers. If the weather holds the potato and sugar beet harvest should also be very good.