{"id":102059,"date":"2025-10-04T01:23:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/102059\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T01:23:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T01:23:20","slug":"i-had-two-choices-when-i-took-over-the-farm-borrow-lots-of-money-and-intensify-or-extensify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/102059\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I had two choices when I took over the farm: borrow lots of money and intensify \u2013 or extensify\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nThis Meath farmer explains why he \u2028converted to organic, why he diversified into tillage and silvopasture agroforestry, and \u2028why he got rid of his cattle after 30 years\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"John in his new agroforestry plantation\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/forestry plantation.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">John in his new agroforestry plantation<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">When John McDonnell took over his grandfather\u2019s Meath farm, he faced a stark choice: borrow heavily and intensify, or take a more extensive route. He chose the latter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cBack then in 1994 there were really only two options,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI decided to go extensive, to continue with the drystock system we had and farm mostly cattle and sheep.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This Meath farmer explains why he \u2028converted to organic, why he diversified into tillage and silvopasture agroforestry, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,64472,64473],"class_list":{"0":"post-102059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-organics","13":"tag-sheep-farm-profiles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}