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The free soil analysis service funded under Northern Ireland’s share of the EU Exceptional Adjustment Aid will require applications to be submitted this summer for soil samples to be taken between November 2017 and February 2018.
Registration for the service will be online and will open for applications on Wednesday 31 May and close on Monday 19 June at midday.
The free service will be run by the Agri Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) and will sample a maximum of 20,000 fields across NI.
Two elements
The service will have two elements, the open scheme will be open to all livestock farmers and the catchment scheme is for farmers within specific areas of the Upper Bann river catchment.
If the scheme is over-subscribed, applications will be prioritised within specific sub-catchments in Upper Bann, followed by a random selection of verified applicants. AFBI will notify applicants if they are successful for the scheme or not by 31 July 2017.
Aid package
The soil analysis service is funded as part of NI’s £4.3m allocation of the EU Exceptional Adjustment Aid, which must be spent before the European Commission’s deadline of 31 September 2017.
The small dairy farmer scheme was introduced earlier this month to effectively use up leftover funds from the aid package and closes for applications on Wednesday.
Other schemes open to NI farmers funded from EAA are the pig competitiveness scheme and the BVD persistently-infected calf removal scheme.
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