Tens of thousands of people have attended the opening day of the National Ploughing Championships.
The three-day event is being held at Ratheniska in County Laois.
President Michael D Higgins officially opened the farming and agriculture showpiece event earlier this afternoon.
In his opening address, he said he was pleased to see so many young farmers in attendance, adding they were the future for the sector.
However despite this, ICMSA President Denis Drennan says it risks losing a generation of farmers because of falling incomes.
As well as Ploughing, over one thousand trade stalls are operating, making it one of the largest outdoor events in Europe.
Numerous political reps have been around, including the Taoiseach Simon Harris, the Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue and Minister James Browne.
Local representative, Wexford IFA Chair Jer O Mahony spoke to South East Radio today about some of the issues facing farmers that he would like to see addressed:
“We’re in the time of the year where we are seeing the harvest and obviously we’re looking at tillage and a tillage scheme or a tillage incentive scheme.
One of the key objectives for this government, was to actually increase the area of tillage in Ireland and after last year’s disastrous year, that’s actually gone backwards.
We need to put a proper retirement scheme in place for those that want to exit farming and actually give them a living wage to move out of farming.
There’s so many young farmers now in Wexford coming out of University and we need to keep those brains in the County to drive Wexford agriculture.”
