The rape harvesting in oil seed increases through Ireland due to demand

The global supply constraints on sunflower oil and an increase in the price of olive oil have meant that the rapeseed oil produced at home has become more common on the Irish supermarket shelves.

Sales should reach 33.3 million euros by 2029, an increase in the expected value of 35%.

The current war in Ukraine affected the supply of sunflower oil and climate change increases the price of olive oil.

Euromonitor international market studies for edge BIA revealed that although olive oil remains the dominant category, rapeseed oil sales reached 24.7 million euros last year.

The planting of the rape of oil seeds has also increased by more than 70% in Ireland in the past five years, with more than 16,000 hectares cultivated last year, against only 9,000 hectares five years ago.

There are currently no large rape treatment plants in Ireland, which has led to export of more than 40% of crops, a large part of the United Kingdom for animal fodder or for use in more transformed vegetable oils.

Newgrange Gold is one of the many small rapeseed oil companies that have started to operate in Ireland.

“With climate change, we have to start looking at solutions that mean that many of our supply chains are closer to us,” said company director Jack Rogers.

Mr. Rogers started the company with his father John, who bought the company’s first petty oil press in the Boyne valley in Co Meath in 2011.

The company tries to compete with extra virgin olive oil on the culinary market by producing products that will appeal to chefs for cooking as well as for salad oils.

The oil is cold pressed and can be infused with flavors, in particular garlic and chilli as well as lemon and herbs.

“Rneuction oil is an ideal opportunity to try to produce something healthy, which has aerial stockings and supports Irish jobs,” said Jack Rogers.

The oil is versatile with a high smoke point, he said, and it also contains omega-3 and other essential fatty acids “so it is actually a fairly good oil to use for your daily dressings, cooking, frying and this kind of thing”.

The company buys its harvest from the Hobson family farm near Warrenstown to Co Meath where oilseed rape is cultivated regenerative as a culture of rupture.

It is turned in a working cycle of the soil with other crops such as winter barley, winter wheat and spring beans.

“It’s good to break the ground, the root grows deeply, so it’s a good culture to help improve yields with other cultures,” said Rogers.

Although the crop planting has recently increased in Ireland, in the confidence of the United Kingdom, it has dropped due to pests such as the cabbage stem flea which made farmers less likely to invest in relatively expensive seeds.

Originally from CO Cork, Dr. Aoife O’Driscoll is a main specialist in the protection of cultures at the National Institute of Agricultural Botanical (NIAB) of the United Kingdom and sought ways to treat the beetle.

“Eight years ago, we started to see the damage appearing,” she said.

There were a number of reasons why the pest began taking over in the United Kingdom where the largest fields of rape with oil seeds can often be cultivated in monoculture.

One was stricter witnesses around neonicotinoid insecticides, which were prohibited at the EU level in 2018.

These chemicals had been used to stop beetles with adult fleas in the fall.

Second, climate change has also played its role.

“One of the composition factors was really that there was a tradition here in the United Kingdom so that farmers grove the rape of oil seeds during the August holiday weekend, which is often the driest part of the year you can get,” said Dr. O’Driscoll.

She said that dry conditions led to a lack of vigor, which increased the capacity of the adult cabbage stem chip to take over and decimate the culture.

Dr. O’Driscoll said that even if the rate of oilseed rape planting continues to grow in Ireland, it is unlikely that it will suffer the same problems as that which has been encountered in the United Kingdom.

It is actually well suited to wet Irish climate, which causes more humidity in the soil.

“The United Kingdom is very focused on the arable. It does not have the cattle and the grass and the rotation that we would have in Ireland. This is probably a positive thing for Irish producers,” she said.

Problems with flea scarab have also decreased more recently due to more meticulous research and management, including methods such as mosaic cultivation, planting of capture crops and grazing and cattle as part of rotation.

The grazing of oil seed harvesting is something that the Hobson family has already started to experiment in CO Meath, the spring lamb being introduced on some of the crops at the start of the year to help increase the depth of the roots and reduce disease infections on young leaves.

Since they started to cultivate rape in oil seeds in 2010, Hobsons have also introduced other regenerative practices such as minimal soil work, the increase in soil health and the use of organic manure, including chicken litter from Cavan and Monaghan to try to reduce their use of artificial fertilizers.

Harvesting remains very difficult to cultivate organically.

Each year before harvesting in summer, it must still be dried artificially or dried up with chemical herbicides before the seeds can be removed.

Small brown seeds are dried in storage before continuing to be cold in cold weather in rapeseed oil.

In the spring, the bright yellow flowers of culture attract bees and other pollinating insects such as hoverflies, which obtain both nectar and pollen from the plant.

The professor of ecology and vice-president of biodiversity and climate action at the Trinity College Dublin Jane Stout said that if the harvest was good for Irish biodiversity depends a lot on the way it is cultivated and managed.

“If it is managed with a lot of insecticide to control these potential parasites, beetles, weevils, then which can have an impact on pollinating insects which visit the flower because pesticides can be found in food resources, nectar and pollen, but they can also be found in soil and which can have impacts on the organizations that live in the soil, but also in other plants have made effects on their own fabrics, “she said, but also other plants that have made their doors”.

The rape of oil seeds is a plant pollinated by insects which has evolved over the years with insects and the way it is currently cultivated in Ireland is not as problematic as in the United Kingdom.

It can also exist alongside other food supplies for pollinators such as sunflowers, orchards and wild flowers or be cultivated in rotation with other flower crops such as buckwheat.

“We always deal with pest insects in Ireland, there are therefore various beetles, particularly weekends which can damage different parts of rape with oil seeds, the plant such as cultivation and development ovaries which is the important part of the oil harvest,” said Professor Stout.

However, she added: “The way we cultivate oilseed rape in Ireland tends to be in smaller spots so that we do not get these extensive monocultures and they are less at risk of the attack on pests.”

It is currently a government political to increase food safety and to feed by developing the area under work in all cultures at 400,000 hectares by 2030.

Discomplete weather events meant that there was a slight decrease from last year in the area under the work of work at 334,450 hectares, compared to 2023.

The Department of Agriculture, through the Food Vision Tillage Group, has commissioned a feasibility study through the Cork University College to determine if more seed oil can be commercially transformed into Ireland in the coming years.