Stephen Robb is the Renewables Editor at the Irish Farmers Journal. His focus is on renewable energy opportunities in the agricultural industry. He is also one of three co-presenters of RTE’s Ear to the Ground. Stephen is also a tillage farmer from Newtowncunningham and is the director of the Northwest Energy Park, a proposed anaerobic digestion project in Donegal. Stephen completed a BAgrSc (Hons) Food and Agribusiness Management followed by a MAgrSc in Agricultural Innovation Support (MAIS) with Teagasc/ University College Dublin. He then completed the HETAC level 7 Professional Diploma in Integrated Pest Management and the Sustainable Use of Pesticides in 2016.
What led you to study Agriculture?
Like many people lucky enough to grow up on a farm, agriculture was always a huge part of my life. There was never any doubt that it was the area I wanted to study.
During fifth and sixth year of secondary school, I spent a lot of time thinking about the next step in my education. I explored my options and ultimately decided that UCD was the right place for me.
What is your fondest memory from your time at UCD?
That’s a difficult question to answer because there are so many great memories. But if I’m being honest, my experience at UCD was shaped by the people around me—most of whom I didn’t know when I first walked through the gates in first year, but who remain my closest friends to this day. There were plenty of great nights out, but also challenging times, and we were always there for each other.
So, for me, the standout memory isn’t just one moment—it’s the process of getting to know those people and building lifelong friendships.
Have you always been interested in this career area? Growing up, we had a busy tillage farm and contracting business, and I knew from a young age that I wanted to pursue a career in agriculture. I've always loved the business side of farming, which led me to study Food and Agribusiness Management.
My day job involves analysing and scrutinising government policy to identify business opportunities for farmers in the energy sector, so that interest in the business side of farming has stayed with me.
How did your studies at UCD support or encourage that interest?
The course I studied aimed to provide a broad overview of the agribusiness industry, preparing students for the working world. Whether you're in the meat, grain, fertiliser, milk or energy sector, the same principles apply. What proved most valuable to me was my work placement, where we had the opportunity to put those principles into practice.
The focus of my master's was more closely related to the area I work in now, and that study period was vital for deepening my understanding of energy and renewables policy—something that is vital to my day-to-day work today.
You completed a masters which is a wonderful achievement; what would you say to students considering further study or those looking to return to education?
I'm glad I completed my master's straight after my undergraduate degree, as it definitely helped open doors. But don’t think that if you don’t go straight into a master's, it’s not for you. Many of my friends and colleagues entered the working world first and either had their master's funded by their employer or later returned to college.
There’s a lot to be said for this approach, as you’ll undertake the master's with real-world experience under your belt and may approach it differently.
What have been the most challenging aspects of your career?
It has to be time management. My day job is busy and involves a lot of travel, and being from Donegal—with our notoriously poor connectivity—hasn’t made that any easier. With Ear to the Ground, the team are flexible with my schedule, and I’m lucky to be able to do some filming at the weekends.
Once you add in farming and developing my own renewables project, there’s not much time left over. It’s something I’m still working on and find particularly challenging during certain pinch points in the year.
What is the proudest moment of your career to date?
I’d say my proudest moments have been the two biggest step-ups in my career: being appointed as Renewables Editor with The Irish Farmers Journal, where I led an entirely new division of the publication, and becoming the new co-presenter of Ear to the Ground on RTÉ.
You recently started the exciting role on Ear to the Ground; can you give us some insight into this new position and what you would like to achieve from this?
I was genuinely shocked when I got the phone call telling me I’d been given the role. We were harvesting spring barley at the time, and I had to hold off celebrating as we were trying to get the field finished before the rain!
It’s a fantastic role, and I’m really enjoying it. I do it alongside my position with The Irish Farmers Journal, so I’m very lucky to have that arrangement with them.
Ear to the Ground is quite different from my day-to-day job. I cover a much broader range of topics, from light-hearted, feel-good stories to deeply challenging issues affecting farming and rural Ireland. A large part of our audience isn’t involved in farming, so the show is an important platform for showcasing both the incredible work being done and the very real challenges our sector faces daily. It’s a huge honour to have that responsibility, and I don’t take it lightly.
In every story, I try to throw myself into it—to get involved and really live it—and I think farmers, in particular, appreciate that. It’s my first season, but hopefully the first of many!
In your career and/or personal life, who have been the most inspiring or helpful mentors/advisors that you’ve had to date?
I’ve met a lot of really good mentors and advisors over the years—too many to list—but one or two do stand out. One pivotal meeting in my life was with UCD’s Damien Dempsey. As a nervous first-year in my first semester, I had a panicked meeting with him, questioning if college was right for me. Thankfully, he gave me the advice and reassurance I needed to stay the course—and thank God I did.
Probably the most influential mentorship I’ve had was from my past boss, the former Irish Farmers Journal tillage editor Andy Doyle. Andy not only taught me the fundamentals of good journalism but also the ins and outs of the industry. I was lucky to spend as many years working and learning with him as I did.
What do you do to relax? Tell us a bit about your current life, family and hobbies.
We’re tillage farmers with grain beet and potatoes, so at certain times of the year, there isn’t much time to spare. We’re actively trying to move the farm in a new direction too, you guessed it, renewables. We’re working on a community anaerobic digestion project on the farm which can be time consuming, but when I’m not working on that, I like to run. My local running spot is the walkway down in Inch Island, Donegal. A nice 8km path which crosses the infamous An Grianán Estate farm, Inch Island, the old Donegal railroad, has a great coffee shop and is all in the middle of Inch Wildfowl Reserve.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
There are two pieces of advice that stand out—one that was invaluable at the start of my career and as it progressed, and another that is only beginning to resonate with me now as I get older.
The first came from my dad, Liam. He instilled in me the value of meeting and getting to know people—the importance of building up contacts. You never know when you might need them, or when they might need you. But the more people you connect with in an industry, the more doors may open.
The second came from a neighbour of mine, Johnny McClintock, who sadly passed away two years ago at the age of 86. Johnny had a busy working life but was a devoted family man. His advice came while he was teaching me to plough with our four-furrow reversible plough in my early teens. Ploughing is a skill—you need to know how to set up the plough, adjust as you go to suit the soil type and conditions, and maintain constant focus and concentration. But Johnny was quick to remind me that it’s not just about the ploughing itself.
He told me, you have to look around you, take it all in, slow it down and enjoy the experience.
To this day, I’m not sure if he was only talking about ploughing. The older I get, the more that advice resonates with me.
And finally what advice would you give to someone considering studying Agriculture and food science or a career in the agri food industry?
I think there are massive opportunities in the food science and agri-food industry. Agriculture is evolving and will likely undergo one of the most dramatic changes since the green revolution at some point in our lifetime. To me, that spells opportunity.
We will always need healthy, high-quality local food, but how we produce it will change. Whether due to shifting demographics, a changing climate, environmental pressure, evolving regulations or new consumer preferences, one thing is certain—those who help inform and guide this transformation will be the ones who build fantastic careers in the industry.
So I’d say, watch, listen, learn and shape where the industry is heading—and be ready to seize opportunities as they come.
