As the combination of climate change and El Nino is making farming more and more difficult, we go to Kilkenny Mart to speak to farmers. Also joining us is Mike Magan, chairperson of the National Fodder and Food Security Committee, who met yesterday as a response to the pressures that the weather is placing on farmers.

Philip was joined in studio by Waseem Saeed of the award-winning Daata restaurants, who continues to be inspired by his late grandmother's cooking and how she might prepare lamb for Eid.

We speak to farmers who are trying to get better prices for their products by selling directly to the public through their own farm shops.

The European Commission has proposed making farms across Europe smaller than ten hectares exempt from CAP inspections and payment penalties. This could impact up to 28,000 mostly beef and sheep farmers in the west of the country.

Countrywide Full 23/03/24

Some weather stations have measured the rainfall since last August as the wettest eight months since Irish meteorological records began. The water table is right below, and in many cases above the surface, which has been disruptive to farming.

In county Limerick, the Bank Holiday Kilmallock Mart was buzzing this week. As well as the buying and selling in the mart ring, there is a market outside and plenty of people out to meet and greet each other at the end of winter.

The Hare's Corner is an old farming expression for an awkward corner of a field or an area of rough ground that was hard to farm, and so left to nature. Participants in the Burrenbeo Trust's Hare's Corner project have dug ponds, planted native trees or traditional orchards, or taken advice on how to manage their land for nature.

The Countrywide team takes us on a riverside journey along the Boyne, navigating its catchment from river head to coast.

Countrywide Full 16/03/24

The snow has melted, Spring has taken hold, and John's young son Ted has just turned one.

Countrywide Full 09/03/24

In many farms, administrative or form filling tasks end up falling to women. In Cooraclevin Co Offaly, we speak to a husband and wife farming partnership, Joe and Karen Smyth, and Karen shows us the paperwork that dominates her life.

The Cheltenham Racing Festival starts on Tuesday with horses travelling from Ireland as hopefuls. Some, like Istabraq in 2000, will come home as legends. But what happens when a legend's last race is run? We speak to Lara Hegarty, who works at JP McManus' Martinstown Stud, where Istabraq lives.

Carmel McKenna has made it her mission to ensure that céilí dancing is for everybody. She has adapted some of the most popular céilí dances, so that people using wheelchairs or with limited mobility can join in.

We speak to Professor of Veterinary Immunology at UCD, Eamonn Gormley about TB vaccines.

Next Wednesday night, Kilronan Castle in County Roscommon will host a Night with the Miners to raise funds for the local North West Stop Mental Health Charity.

Countrywide Full 02/03/24

We hear from a vegetable farmer in Kerry whose vegetables are being fed to cattle because of cheaper imports from Spain.

Hannah Quinn Mulligan loves the Irish words that describe life on the farm, and the way some of those words have become woven into everyday life beyond the farm gate.

TB is at a ten year high, with a nearly 25% jump in the number of animals testing positive between 2022 and 2023. New research identified four sources of the spread of TB, and how much of a contribution each of them makes.

The RNLI marks 200 years of the lifeboat service shortly, and Lorna Siggins visits one of the oldest west coast stations on the Aran islands all-weather lifeboat.

Countrywide Full 24/02/24

We pay a visit to north Cork to look at the Duhallow Farming For Blue Dot Catchments Project. We are also joined in studio by Eddie Burgess, River Catchment specialist in Teagasc.

We are joined by former international rugby referee Nigel Owens, nowadays a Hereford farmer, to tell us what is at the heart of the issue impacting Welsh farmers. And of course, we ask him what his predictions are for the game in Lansdowne Road later...