The national farm advisory service will stage hundreds of special sessions on farms throughout the country to help farmers cope with the growing difficulties caused by the wet weather over the last month.
The announcement from Teagasc came as it emerged that only 5 per cent of the vital winter silage feed has been harvested and the quality of the grass remaining in the fields is deteriorating rapidly.
In addition, cereal and vegetable crops have been hit by unprecedented levels of disease and farmers are unable to move machinery on to crops to spray them.
Grass growth has slowed down to such an extent that some beef animals have had to be removed from pasture and milk yields are expected to drop on farms where supplementary feeding is not taking place.
Many sheep farmers have been unable to shear their flocks because the weather is too cold and they could lose their animals through pneumonia.
From a non-farming point of view, the risk of fish kills from silage pollution has soared with a doubling of the toxic effluent from silage crops.
Teagasc spokesman Mr Michael Miley said yesterday that while he could not yet use the word "crisis" in relation to current farming conditions, there were very serious problems. "It is particularly bad and unprecedented in the severity of the weather at this time of year," he said.
He explained that 50 per cent of the State's 20 million tonnes of silage was normally harvested in the first cutting between mid May and mid-June. As of now, only 10 per cent of this cut had been achieved.
"The quality of what remains is disimproving dramatically and when harvested it will not have the same nutrition as is usual, having a knock-on impact on the winter fodder situation," he said.
"In addition, farmers rely on after-grass, which grows after the first silage cut is taken, for summer grazing and that will not now be available in many cases, especially in the wetter parts of the country."
He said farmers faced serious environmental problems from silage effluent because it had been estimated that because of the wet weather, each acre of silage would produce 7,000 litres of effluent.
"This is abnormally high because in better weather, farmers cut and leave the grass drying for a day or two before harvesting and the normal effluent levels are around 3,000 litres.
"This is creating a major environmental problem for farmers who have to store this material to ensure it does not get into groundwater," he said.
Cereal farmers had never experienced such conditions in living memory and there were major difficulties for potato and other vegetable growers.
Teagasc, he said, would be staging special sessions on monitor farms normally used by Teagasc for demonstration purposes to help farmers cope with the current difficulties. "Already farmers have suffered unrecoverable losses but the severe difficulties may become a crisis if the weather does not improve in the next three weeks," he said.
• Met Éireann yesterday forecast continuing broken weather over coming days.