Suzanne Campbell

Hello, good morning.

You're very welcome to the programme.

Between now and nine, taking the diesel out of slurry spreading in Wexford, taking the oil out of fertiliser in Leash, taking fossil fuels out of farming everywhere, is the battery tractor ready to go?

8 degrees and blustery here, 26 degrees and contentious in the Straits of Hormuz as you've been hearing in the headlines there.

Farming is very much at the sharp end of oil price spikes and spikes just keep on happening.

Listen to this list.

2008, global financial crisis, $147 a barrel.

2011, Arab Spring, $127.

2014, Libyan civil war, $111.

2022, Russia invades Ukraine, $122.

$117 a barrel during this war, though it is at $95 today.

Do we keep on muddling along, pushing businesses to breaking point, tempers to boiling point and passing the bill to the taxpayer?

Or should we spend this morning's programme exploring ways to wean ourselves off a clearly silly way of doing business if there are alternatives?

It is slurry spreading season.

Tractors running up and down fields for hours on end, sucking diesel from dawn till dusk.

So I spent some time this week with a contractor who specialises in slurry spreading to see what impact Trump's war in Iran and the government's three quarters of a billion euro subvention was having on his ability to stay in business.

What's happening here then?

So, we have our pump pumping out our slurry.

Eamon is in the tractor, he has his flow meter.

Eamon sits in a tractor on top of a pit in a Wexford farmyard.