Innovative Tullow man hosted farm walk

HAVING taken on the family farm near Tullow in 2020, Jack Browne has taken an innovative approach to the land. He grows organic oats for Tírlán, as well as hay and silage. However, he is also trialling an agroforestry system.

Agroforestry is a system of integrating trees into crops and grassland for many beneficial reasons. The agroforestry system is carefully designed, not only to complement his organic tillage enterprise in terms of providing a shelter belt and boosting nutrient cycling but also to encourage corridors for wildlife to travel along, within the farm.

Over 2,000 trees have been planted into the tillage ground. They have been planted in rows with a 24m spacing between rows. This means there is ample room for machinery to operate as normal. But, it has the added benefits of improving soil health, fertility and provides useful corridors for wildlife. Rather than putting all his eggs in one basket, a diverse mix of trees was planted with both natives and exotics. It includes a mix of fruit, nut and timber trees, such as walnut, sweet chestnut, apple, pear, peach, cherry, alder, oak, hawthorn and many more.

As these trees mature, the fruit and nuts can be harvested year after year. This will add another income stream to the farm. Jack is keen that his farm is a 'low-input, premium-output system'. Meanwhile, the trees help to protect his crops from the effects of flooding and drought, among other benefits.

Previously being a monocrop farm, he has also sown 12 hectares of multispecies swards to build fertility, which he says has “led to an explosion of biodiversity on the farm – the amount of bird life that came back was unbelievable”.

Building on the trees he has already planted, he is experimenting with min-till methods as a part of ACRES and he's hoping to expand the amount of land under agroforestry into the future.

With agroforestry systems in their infancy in Ireland, Jack is happy to share his experiences of organic tillage and agroforestry.