100 Years of Knowledge Transfer: Nl college celebrates its centenary with sheep conference

摘要

An inspirational young farmer was the highlight within a line-up of top speakers at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) - Greenmount College 's centenary celebration sheep conference at the end of last year. Russell Scott only finished his student days at Greenmount in 2005, at which point he returned to the family farm with the intention of making it justify his full-time attention while both his parents worked elsewhere. He had already increased the farm from 24ha (60 acres) and 75 ewes in 1998 to 85ha (210 acres), 270 ewes and 15 heifers by 2002. Between 2005 and now he upped numbers to 330 ewes and 18 suckler cows, and also took the opportunity in 2009 to buy 55ha (135 acres) of land he had been renting. Russell told the conference his priorities were prolificacy and benchmarking - the first to drive performance and the second to monitor it.