Balmoral Show: Centenary celebrations for AFBI's Hillsborough farm

Established just five years after Partition, the site was bought by the Government of Northern Ireland for £25,000 following negotiations with the Ulster Farmers Union and the Ulster Agricultural Organisation Society.

The following year, the Agricultural Institute of Northern Ireland (ARINI) was officially established.

Over the next few decades, the Hillsborough site was at the forefront of huge advances in agriculture, from Harry Ferguson showing his new tractor plough in 1927 to the first silage trials in 1947.

It was those trials, which included comparisons of silage versus barndried hay, which convinced farmers across Northern Ireland to make the shift to silage from 1948.

In the years that followed, Hillsborough was also heavily involved in important research into milk production and the development of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIR) which allowed farmers and nutritionists to analyse silage in minutes.

And years before ammonia emissions and greenhouse gases became central to agricultural policy, scientists at Hillsborough laid the foundations for today’s research.

Over three decades ago, work began to measure ammonia losses from slurry. Respiration chamber research represented another scientific breakthrough. This work, through measuring the metabolic performance of dairy cows, helped design the nutritional requirements of dairy cattle while also minimising losses of waste gases such as methane.

Work continues today to refine nutritional requirements aligned with genetic improvements and new dietary formulations. This research continues to be vital in ensuring the practices of the Northern Ireland farming industry are appropriately recognised in national accounting

systems while also supporting innovation in livestock nutrition.

While ARINI was absorbed into AFBI in 2006, twenty years later AFBI Hillsborough remains at the cutting-edge of agricultural science, with international recognition.

The work programme at the site is extensive and spans all aspects of the farming system – from soil to grassland and animal research as well as slurry, fertilizer and wider land use sciences.

At its core, the work provides farmers with the knowledge and solutions to harnessopportunities and address challenges as a result of climate or legislation.

Meanwhile, Ulster Bank has a major presence at Balmoral Show. And according to the organisation’s head of agriculture, Cormac McKervey, it is very much a ‘steady-as-she goes’ scenario for most of the farming sectors in Northern Ireland.

He explained: “Milk prices seemed to have bottomed out despite increased global supplies and at a higher level than was thought last autumn.

“Current returns are below the cost of production. But, thankfully, the market downturns predicted for the milk sector last autumn were not fully realised.

“What’s more strong calf, weanling and cull cow prices also combined to help compensate for the fall in milk prices that did occur over the past number of months.”

But the Ulster Bank representative is also pointing to other positive trends that now define the dairy industry.

“The quality of the milk produced on our dairy farms continues to increase. And this is worth real money across the sector,” he said.

“Securing an additional two to three pence per litre of milk on the back of improved butterfat and protein works out at an additional £20,000 to £30,000 of additional income per one million litres of milk produced.

“Quality bonuses are also more significant during those periods when pressure comes on base milk prices.”

McKervey concluded: “The use of sexed semen has significantly enhanced the rate at which genetic progress hasbeen secured within the dairy sector. And there is little doubt that the Sustainable Ruminant Genetics Programme will act to further accelerate this rate of positive change.”