CountryWide

Countrywide Full Episode 17/10/2026 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As our landscape changes, due to development, climate and new uses of land, the names of fields are being lost. Treasa Bhreathnach reports from Rahara, Co Roscommon on a project to record field names before they are lost forever.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ireland’s record on climate action is on course to be the worst in Europe. Why have efforts to cut farming’s greenhouse gasses come to a standstill.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Poet Jane Clarke’s work is a firm favourite among farmers. Her new collection asks awkward questions of all of us about what we are allowing to happen to the natural world.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Hawthorn Hill Farm in Roscommon Keith Brennan contemplates the unearthly call of the amorous fallow deer   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How the seas and ocean around Ireland shape our lives and could change our future.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Prof John Bell flips Ireland's idea of itself on its head. The country is not a peripheral island on the edge of Europe. It is a large maritime nation that could become a bio-economic super power.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Creative Ireland visual arts project "Dunmore Through a Lens" has captured the Waterford fishing village's people and their memories. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Surfer and Academic Dr Easkey Britton believes that both we and the ocean will benefit by adjusting our relationship with the marine world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gareth Murphy's company Oir Na Farraige has found a low impact way of harvesting seaweed for a range of uses that might actually protect marine ecosystems. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Only the tiniest fraction of the flour needed to bake the 50kg of bread we eat a year is grown and milled in Ireland, and the cost of what we import is sky rocketing. We take a look at what needs to be done to keep the price of bread down by making it here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Following her victory in the EU's most prestigious organic award we visit Kay O'Sullivan at home on Glynn Organic Farm in North Cork.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ireland's first certified Nest Protection Officer Training Programme was recently launched by Ministers Martin Heydon and Christopher O'Sullivan. It was developed by Owen Murphy and Donal Beagan of the publicly funded Breeding Waders EIP, with the training body Lantra, and supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture.  Donal Beagan spoke about how thi...

The survey was commissioned by Agriland and the ICMSA, and it shows it isn't only older farmers who want out. One in five farmers in their late forties and early fifties, which is young in this business, say they're likely to leave. Half of those planning to exit have no successor lined up. Yet the same survey says access to land is one of the biggest barriers for people trying to get into farming...

During the week, a major new survey was published which suggests there will be an exodus of farmers in the next few years. In a comprehensive survey of Irish farmers - with 2,300 people responding across every sector and county - one in three farmers say they will leave farming within the next five years. Della Kilroy reports.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Approx 5% of Irish children cycle to school every day. One idea trying to change that is the school cycle bus. It's a group of primary school children led by adult volunteers along a set route. Regan Hutchins joined the Skibbereen Cycle Bus in County Cork, to show it's a fun way to start the day.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Paul Walker is well known in the business for breeding, training and trialling sheepdogs. Now the Chilean-English trainer has turned his hand to horses at the home he shares with his partner Leah Henry in Mayo. Lorna Siggins reports.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For a quarter of a century, John McKeon has been collecting seeds from the trees and hedgerows around his home near Castleblayney in Monaghan. The 75-year-old retired agricultural adviser has used them to grow more than twenty species of native tree, among them oak, holly, hazel and more. John's work is at the heart of 'Seeds of Inspiration', a project from the Irish Wildlife Trust and the Monagha...

If any of you have an apple tree in a park near you, on your farm or garden, you’ll notice how early the apples have appeared - very early. Con Traas's parents, Willem and Ali, came from Holland in 1967 looking for land to grow fruit. They found a farm with an old orchard in Tipperary, and the family has been growing apples there ever since.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informatio...

This week, five secondary schools, from Donegal to Cork, were presented with an Aberdeen Angus calf to bring home and rear. It's all part of the Certified Irish Angus schools' competition, which asks students to do a research project on farming. 180 schools entered this year, and the finalists collected their calves at the Ploughing.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The All-Ireland Lamb Shearing Championships took place at the Ploughing this week when Ireland’s fastest and most skilled sheep shearers - ranging from juniors upwards - were put to the test.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the National Ploughing Championships, young agri start-ups had a chance to pitch for Enterprise Ireland awards, and Suzanne Campbell met three of these companies as they tried to catch the judges' attention, each trying to win one of the overall prizes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ireland sends its plan for restoring nature to Brussels, so how much public money will be allocated to it, and what will it ask? Minister for Nature, Heritage and Biodiversity Christopher O’Sullivan joined us to discuss.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of this vision of a more "open access" Ireland might seem unachievable. But there is an example of farmers opening up access to the public and everybody getting along. The Sheepshead Way was created 30 years ago this year – securing agreement from 265 different landowners to open up all the old mass paths, holy well paths, to school through the fields paths and connect them all together into...

This morning we took a a closer look at the kind of access to the countryside that the state is actually investing in; Greenways. 350 km of Greenway has been built in the last 5 years, and there are plans to build out a network of paved cycling paths that will be ten times that long. But, along the South Kerry Greenway, compulsory Purchase of land from farmers who say they were open to granting ac...