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DAERA received 480 applications from farm businesses seeking to operate under a nitrates derogation in 2018, a department spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal this week.
Although the level of uptake in 2018 is above the 310 applications received last year, it is still significantly short of the 1,000 plus applications that DAERA officials would like to receive.
In January, 2,300 farm businesses received a letter from the department stating that they could be operating over the manure nitrogen (N) limit of 170kg/ha.
A derogation increases that limit from 170kg/ha to 250kg/ha.
DAERA tried to incentivise more farmers to apply for derogations this year by only asking for information on the planned stocking rate for 2018, and not details from previous years.
However, only 199 of the applications received in 2018 were from farm businesses that had not applied for a derogation last year.
Slurry exports
The other main option for those operating above the N loading limit is to export slurry off their farms.
However, an extension to the deadline for submitting records of 2017 slurry exports from 31 January to 1 March did not bring more applications.
There were 1,588 farm business that submitted records of slurry exports during 2017, down from 1,808 in the previous year.
SHARING OPTIONS: