So it was an eye-opener when it was explained to me in Teagasc’s Moorepark centre that dairying had indeed undermined profitability for beef farmers.

On the output end, the dairy man has flooded the market with cheap calves that have basically diluted the value of the suckler calf. And at the other end the dairy farmer has driven up the cost of the most basic input in land values and rents.

The fact that dairy incomes have been multiples of those in the beef sector rubs salt in the wound.

And that economic chasm is only going to get worse this year.

Milk prices have jumped by about 50pc in the last year, from about 35c per litre a year ago to closer to 50c/L now.

Beef prices are also at record highs but the relative increase is much lower, at closer to a 25pc increase on this time last year.

Input costs have increased by the same amount in both systems, but it’s the dairy farmer who will fare best out of this spell of extraordinary price inflation.

That will only widen the abyss between the farming haves and have-nots, and further fuel feelings of resentment towards the sector that is dominant.

Similar dynamics spurred the anti-dairy campaigns in New Zealand. Feeling threatened and worried that they would be put out of business by an ever-expanding dairy sector, the ‘dirty dairy’ campaign found some of its most ardent support among beef farmers.

We have plenty of examples of similar sentiments here. A recent headline proclaimed EU warnings that ‘Ireland’s dairy growth threatens farm payments’.

This is despite the fact that dairy is just one of a number of issues that the EU has with Ireland’s environmental ambitions for the farm sector.

But there are signs that the dairy sector is finally looking to address the festering divide that its success has spawned.

The Dairy Beef Index (DBI) may be a day late and a dollar short, but it is just one part of a fairly monumental shift that is occurring in the dairy sector right now.

Any sexed semen that was available in the country for this breeding season has completely sold out, and expectations are that demand is going to double again next year, to the point where we’ll be on par with Britain, where over two-thirds of all AI on the dairy herd uses sexed semen.

That’s a phenomenal increase in a product that was a novelty item five years ago.

It means that dairy farmers can breed calves specifically to suit the beef farmer after the first 25pc of the herd has been inseminated with female dairy straws to cover all replacement requirements.

The DBI comes into its own because it guarantees the two key traits for both parties: an easy calving for the dairy farmer, and a calf that’s worth fattening for the beef farmer.

One of the challenges, however, is how to change the reputation that the dairy cross-bred calf has among beef farmers.

After horsing out hundreds of thousands of useless Jersey cross-bred and extreme Holstein calves for the last 20 years, it will take time to convince beef farmers that the dairy man has anything to offer other than a bag of bones.

So the news that Teagasc have secured a 15-year lease on a 280-acre farm to demonstrate the viability of a dairy-calf-to-beef system is an important initiative.

The reality is that the vast majority of Irish beef calves will be bred from the dairy herd from now on.

But while the dairy farmer controls the genetics, they are increasingly dependent on a guaranteed outlet for that calf. We are just a hair’s breadth away from a crisis in this regard if the pressure valve of live exports is removed.

However, the fundamentals are in place. Teagasc know that a net margin of €500/ha is achievable in a dairy-calf-to-beef system. The dairy farmer now has the breeding tools to produce good-quality beef calves.

And there finally seems to be an acknowledgement within the dairy sector of just how vulnerable they really are without a viable beef sector working beside them.

Darragh McCullough runs a mixed farm enterprise in Meath, elmgrovefarm.ie