All farmers are subject to greening in the years ahead but most can avail of derogations, mainly based on the relative amount of land in grass. Where more than 75% of the land on an application is grassland, and there is less than 30ha of crops, then the greening obligations do not apply.

Farmers who cannot avail of the different derogations may need to comply with crop diversification and ecological focus areas if they have more than 10 or 15ha respectively. Any farmer who may be caught by greening should submit his/her application online to avail of additional clarification during the 2015 application process.

Most farmers who are thought to be caught by greening have been notified by the Department of their situation. Some may opt to increase their tillage or decrease their cropped area in order to qualify for a derogation.

Some farmers may still have to register for this online application process. This should be done as soon as possible. Others have a registration number but have become locked out for one of a number of reasons. If you are locked out of your account you can ring the Department helpline number, which is very helpful and generally answered, and they will get you up and running again. Be at your computer when you ring. Alternatively you can email the Department helpline with your Username details and they will get you sorted promptly.

Farmers are generally surprised by the level of details now present on the parcel maps where the EFA features are marked. This information should now be checked and corrected if necessary. Even if you are a first time applicant, when you get onto your online account it will be populated with all of your recent application details, along with your personal details and correspondence, plus all of the parcel details for recent years.

An assessment of your status re crop diversification and EFA will be pre-calculated to tell you how you would fare if your application was an exact replica of last year. However, changes in parcel use in 2015 will change this assessment and you cannot regard it as correct until after all of your 2015 details can be entered in the near future.

Where a new parcel is to be added in 2015 an applicant will have to contact the Department to get the parcel number and also to have it evaluated for its EFA features. This should also be done as soon as possible.