Ragwort has got out of control in westmeath

To the uninformed, a field marked with what look like pretty yellow flowers, swaying in the breeze, may seem like the countryside at its best.

But to anyone with a knowledge of farming, those pretty yellow flowers – ragwort – are a pretty obnoxious sight. Not merely obnoxious, but noxious too.

“The problem has got out of control,” IFA chairman, Gordon Johnston told the Westmeath Examiner this week, adding that the subject had been raised for discussion at the most recent IFA county executive meeting by concerned farmers.

“Both the council and farmers are failing in their duty to control the issue,” he said.

“Some farmers are trying to do a good job – but next door, you could have a farmer who won’t control it on his land,” he says, adding that the seeds spread easily.

As well as spreading to adjacent farms, it can spread to roadside verges – which are under the council’s control – and the seed can spread again, in turn, from the roadside back to farmlands.

“At last week’s county executive meeting, a lot of farmers were complaining about it in Westmeath. A couple of farmers who do control it themselves were very vocal over it, and we would have devoted a bit of time to the issue.”

There seems, he believes, to be a particular problem in Westmeath.

“I think other counties are controlling it better: whether it’s that more intensive farms are controlling it better, or other farmers seem to be on the ball, but it does seem to be a problem here.”

Overall responsibility for the problem lies – perhaps somewhat surprisingly – with An Garda Síochána.

The 1936 Noxious Weeds Act says that any member of An Garda Síochána or any authorised inspector, can enter lands to see if noxious weeds are growing there – and if they are, they can serve a notice on the person responsible for the land requiring them to destroy the weeds.

Failure to comply with the notice can result in prosecution.

It’s not just ragwort that is on the schedule attached to the act: also there are thistles, dock, common barberry, male wild hop and spring wild oat.

Of all these, however, the most serious is ragwort, and according to Teagasc, it is toxic to cattle, horses, deer, goats, pigs and chickens.

”Sheep are less affected by it,” says Teagasc, and Mr Johnston confirms that as a sheep farmer, it is less of a headache for him, as the sheep happily eat it while young, with no adverse effects.

Cattle will rarely eat it as it grows, as they don’t like the taste: the main issue is that if it is not taken out of a field before hay or silage are made, the cattle will end up ingesting it as part of their silage or hay rations over the winter.

Teagasc advises: “The poisonous material contained in ragwort is not destroyed by drying. Hay containing ragwort is particularly dangerous. Grass silage containing ragwort is also a serious source of poisoning. Cases of poisoning occurring in late winter and spring often result from the feeding for some months previously of hay or silage cut from ragwort infested swards.”

Getting rid of ragwort is difficult enough. According to Teagasc, the only real options are: pulling, ploughing, cutting or chemical control.

The ideal way is to spray it – but the difficulty with this is that as it dies, the sugars in the plant increase, which make it more palatable to livestock, increasing the chances of their eating it. It also means that silage or hay can’t be harvested until the sprayed plants have died and rotted.

Alternatively, it can be pulled by hand, but it is necessary to lift the entire root.