Northern Ireland’s College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) has announced that its Technology Demonstration Farm programme is back up and running again.
Launched in November 2019, the programme was halted in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
CAFRE established the Technology Demonstration Farm network to provide farmers with the opportunity to see new technology and innovations at work that they could then consider adopting into their own businesses.
CAFRE is now taking bookings for future visits to all 18 farms included in the programme.
To date, CAFRE has recruited four dairy, four sheep and 10 beef farmers to demonstrate technologies within a number of themes including feed efficiency, mobility improvement, grassland management and breeding.
Dairy farmer John Rafferty from Poyntzpass in Co. Down, who is involved in the programme, said: “I have had five Technology Demonstration Farm visits to my farm to date and the feedback has been very positive indeed with excellent discussion having taken place. I am really looking forward to welcoming more groups onto the farm again.”
The college will also appoint two additional Pig Technology Demonstration Farms this autumn.
The programme is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and the EU as part of the Rural Development Programme under the Innovation Technology Evaluation Demonstration (ITED) scheme.
