A bright future for bio energy and the agricultural sector was unveiled at the Mayo Willow Harvest Open Day, an event that marked the first harvest of biomass willow in Mayo on a 20-acre plot at Derek Hannick's farm, two miles outside Ballina. Over 130 people from across the farming community attended to learn about the potential for bio energy to create jobs and provide markets for agriculture within the region.
Attendees included county manager Peter Hynes and Deputy Michelle Mulhern, who committed their full support to the open day.
Brendan Killion and Christian Jenne of Mayo Energy Agency opened the event with an overview of energy key drivers, outlining that Ireland imports approximately 90 per cent of its fuel for energy and that we needed to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and reduce our carbon emissions.

Bernadette Phelan of the Western Development Commission (WDC) presented the market potential for wood energy in the western region and how it can help achieve economic growth. A wood energy action plan for the region has been developed by the WDC, outlining the potential to generate 900 jobs by 2020.
Dave Shaffer, project manager for Mayo Power and Joyanne Manning of Arup Consulting gave an introduction to the 50MW biomass power station at the old Asahi site in Killala that is currently in planning with Mayo County Council.
The €100 million project will create over 200 jobs during construction, 26 jobs to operate the power plant and 75 indirect jobs.

Mr. Shaffer also explained there is huge potential for job creation in agriculture to supply local biomass to the plant. Approximately 40,000 hectares of biomass within the region will be required equating to an annual fuel supply of €20 million that can be produced locally.
Mayo Power will offer 10-year contracts to farmers, giving a guaranteed market for their biomass crops. Farmers will be given advice on crop management and a supply of ash from the facility to fertilize the crops.
A planning decision is due at the end of April for the project with construction commencing in November.

This project will produce enough clean power for all the homes in Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon, making the region both self-sufficient and carbon neutral for its electricity needs.
Barry Caslin, Teagasc bio energy specialist, then presented the returns that farmers can expect from willow and the yields that can be expected per hectare.
Teagasc are available to all farmers who are interested in growing biomass and have produced excellent best practice manuals for biomass crop production.
Raymond O'Neill of Seedtech presented the agronomy of willow production. He gave a brief overview of willow crop production. This exciting presentation explained what land to choose, how to plant it and how to harvest it.

Derek Hannick spoke of his reasons as a part time farmer for growing willow and how it helped him reduce labour inputs and simplify his farming operation.
To put the opportunity that will be created by Mayo Power into perspective he then outlined all the people and the work involved in planting his 20 acres of willow.
"Multiply this work by 1,000 within the local agricultural economy and you will get the picture of the potential the Mayo Power Plant has to create local agricultural employment," he stated.
The open day ended with a harvest demonstration on Derek's farm by the Farrelly Bros. from Co. Meath. From the top of the willow harvester, Pat Farrelly gave an excellent description of how the machinery worked and gave a live demonstration of the machinery in operation.