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The overall winner of the 2025 Teagasc/FBD Environmental Sustainability Award was Don Somers, a tillage farmer from Oylgate, Co Wexford. Pictured are: Professor Frank O’Mara, Teagasc director; Michael Berkery, chairman FBD trust; Timmy Dooley, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications; Don and Gillian Somers; and Dr Tom O’Dwyer, Teagasc.
The awards aims to promote environmentally sustainable farming. The awards highlight the progress farmers are making to lighten the load of farming on the environment, while continuing to produce high quality, nutritious food, in a profitable manner. This year’s finalists are being recognised for their commitment to areas including greenhouse gas emissions reduction, improving water quality, enhancing biodiversity, improving soil health and farming with innovation. The standard of entries was exceptionally high, with farmers demonstrating a wide range of innovative and practical approaches to improving the environmental performance of their farms.
The finalists are:
| Name | County | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
Thomas and Peter O’Hanrahan | Dairy calf to beef | |
John
McSweeney | Suckler beef | |
Maurice
Deasy | Tillage | |
Philip O'Leary and
Aileen Sheehan | Dairy | |
Matt
Hennessy | Organic tillage | |
Michael
Gleeson | Organic suckler beef | |
William Dennehy | Dairy | |
Aonghusa
Fahy | Suckler Beef | |
Patrick and Kayleigh Durkin | Dairy | |
Alan
McCann | Horticulture |
Diverse range
The finalists represent a diverse range of Irish farming systems and demonstrate that there is no single approach to improving environmental sustainability. Their work includes actions like reducing reliance on chemical nitrogen, improving nutrient use efficiency, enhancing biodiversity through better hedgerow management and planting trees and new hedges, improving soil fertility, more sustainable breeding practices, best use of the decision support tools available to them and many other actions.
The overall winner of the Teagasc FBD Environmental Sustainability Awards 2026 will be announced at an event in Co. Laois on Thursday, October 1, alongside the winners of the individual award categories and special recognition awards.