Based in Newtownmountkennedy, Co Wicklow, SK Agri is headed up by growers Tom Short and Dean Kelly. Irish Tractor Agri & Plant touched base with Tom Short to hear all about the business, its recent award success at the Tirlán Quality Grain Awards and overall hopes going forward.
It’s no secret that these are tough times for tillage farmers, with a combination of high costs, unpredictable weather and low grain prices severely impacting their bottom line.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as these things tend to be generally cyclical and there’s always hope of better times ahead.
Wicklow grower Tom Short likes to take the same positive viewpoint, overseeing SK Agri – a tillage and dairy enterprise situated in Kilmullen close to Newtownmountkennedy.
It’s operated with three full-time staff and the Shorts have substantial acreage between owned and leased land, while there’s 250 acres of grassland and, after having first gotten into dairy five years ago, they’re now milking 150 cows.
Irish Tractor Agri & Plant caught up with Tom to find more on the state of business at the moment for SK Agri.
“With regards to last year, you’d have to look back and say it was nothing sort of a miracle. On April 20th, we had no spring crops sown and we had a very small acreage of winter crops and a lot of those weren’t looking good after the winter that they had gone through,” he outlined.
“The optimism was very flat, very poor, and the way I sum it up is the Minister even felt concerned for us and went on to give €10m of support make sure that we could keep putting crops into the ground. That shows how serious it was. We never ever before at the end of April had so little sowing done. We went on, the weather did come good, but we didn’t have a lot of choices.
“We had spring barley and it was only 16 weeks in the ground from the day we sowed to the day we harvested it, and yet we’d 3.3 tonnes and had super quality.”
He added: “As I say, we weren’t expecting an awful lot and you know the price on the premium side was very good. We came out the right side of it and in the back end then harvest was tricky but manageable. You just had to be there to grab the opportunity.”
Tom has been farming in partnership with Dean Kelly for the past few years, growing winter oats, oil seed rape, spring malting, feed barley, winter barley, spring beans and cover crops.
Of course, none of this can be done without the right equipment and the machinery fleet in Kilmullen is maintained to the highest standard year-round.
“At harvest time, we’re using a John Deere 660 Walker Combine and then any of the feed grains would be dried and stored on the farm.”
Right now, Tom stands as representative in the local Tirlán rep structure and is also a member of the Tirlán Grain Advisory Group.
As well as that, he’s the former Wicklow IFA chairman and ex-IFA South Leinster regional chair, which were roles that saw him gaining priceless experience whilst he was in them.
“I was in that position (Wicklow IFA chairman) overall for four years. It was a great experience,” he said. “You couldn’t put a value on it, great experience and the amount of people that you get to know outside the farm gate; let it be the Department of Agriculture or a chemical company, and you get to see the problems. We all think we’re the only ones with problems, but when you’re out there listening to people you can put a great perspective on the whole thing.
“I’m out of it now eight years and it’s fairly obvious to me that the family farm structure is in big, big trouble. It’s ‘get big or go home’ and we’re going to end up with a few corporate farms in every county. That is not good for our food industry That’s happening very dramatically in the tillage over the last ten years, but it’s now happening in all enterprises. The family farm is being destroyed.
“It was a great experience to be able to represent people as Wicklow IFA chairman but 130,000 farms families; they’re not all going to be sustainable. You can’t have cheap food and a perfect environment. We have to be thinking outside the box and I would be a huge advocate of renewable energy coming from the land.”
The challenges out there are plentiful for the average family farm, including for the Shorts in Wicklow who have been at it for four decades now when it comes to tillage farming.
“I’m 40 years in tillage farming now and, in fairness, I had huge concerns about Tirlans commitment to the grain farmer. But in the last number years they’ve done a major seed change when you see the amount going into premium products and the way they’re promoting grain,” said the Garden County native.
“Grain farmers working with Tirlán now feel that there’s a reconnect – it’s not just a dairy co-op. They now know we need the tillage farmer, not just for the good of the dairy, but also for the good of the premium business let it be for malting barley or food grade oats. All of that is very positive.
On February 12th, SK Agri’s excellence was recognised on a national scale when it won in the ‘Premium Spring Barley’ category at the annual Tirlán Quality Grain Awards.
Speaking on the award success for his business, Tom summed it up candidly by saying: “I don’t think it was anything I did different. The damp cool May and June gave the barley a great opportunity to develop properly in a short space of time.”
Looking ahead to the coming months, Tom says he’s eager to see changes that’ll benefit Ireland’s tillage farmers.
“I’ll always remain positive but I would have concerns because costs are rising again. I’d be very disappointed with the malting industry the way they’re pulling back the premium price,” he said.
“In relative terms, when we see the price of a pint of beer going up and the price of the main ingredient (Barley) going into a pint of Guinness coming back by 17% there is a fundamental flaw there and that needs to be addressed.”
Hear, hear.
SK Agri
Kilmullen,
Newtownmountkennedy,
Co Wicklow
Mobile: 086 259 6950
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 13 No 1, Spring 2025
