Finally the new environmental scheme, GLAS, opened for applications this week. Promised for so long and farmers are finally getting concrete information regarding the terms and conditions of the scheme, even though the European Commission has yet to give final approval for it.

Information meeting

I attended my second GLAS information meeting this week in the hope of signing up and finding out tasks I may have to carry out in order to receive the maximum possible payment. It appears that 30,000 farmers will enter GLAS in 2015 with a total of 50,000 farmers being accommodated over the life of the new scheme. I’ve put my name forward, however there is no guarantee that I will qualify to enter GLAS this year.

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With so many unknowns regarding agricultural support schemes up to now it has been difficult to budget exactly what sort of payments to expect in the current year. Farmers are finding it very difficult to figure out how much the “cheque in the post” is going to be. While we would all prefer not to be dependent on farm subsidies from Europe and our national government, the reality is these payments make up a major part of farm income, particularly in the west of Ireland.

Lack of details on schemes

Disadvantage Area Aid, REPS, the Suckler Cow Scheme and other schemes have all been a major source of income for farmers over the years. However, we are now at the end of February and farmers are only now getting details relating to the new Basic Payment Scheme and GLAS. We are still awaiting details on Knowledge Transfer Groups and the Beef Data and Genomics scheme. It has been virtually impossible to prepare a budget for the coming year without knowing details of what schemes will be open and whether or not any payment will actually be received this year.

Hopefully within the next few days all farmers will have received details of what their new basic payment will be for the next five years. GLAS applications will be processed and more information will be available regarding the various schemes proposed under the new Rural Development Programme.

Farmers can then look forward to implementing the various tasks required. However they may be disappointed to find out later there will be no payment for carrying out these tasks. I cannot think of any other business that would complete a piece of work during the year, but not know how much, or when, they are going to be paid. Such is the life of a farmer.

Incidentally, has anyone ever calculated how much the value of the single farm payment has been eroded by inflation since it was first introduced?