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Farmers anxious to hear if new Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) maps will disqualify their land for payment have been assured that maps will be “almost the same” as the ones currently in use.
“The new ANC map is almost the same as the old one,” Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Andrew Doyle told a Macra na Feirme event in Kilkenny.
Some 95,000 farmers receive payments under the current ANC, with mountain-grazing land receiving the highest payments of up to €4,038.
“You will see the three different classes [of constraint] having a different ratio of payment.
‘‘The mountain and the disadvantaged will probably get the main element of it,” Minister Doyle said.
Flexibility
The minister explained that there is a 10% flexibility on land categorisation in the redrawing of maps.
A fine-tuning and identification process is under way to further target support under the scheme from 2019 onwards.
Minister Doyle also signalled that there would be a fresh approach to ANC payments in the next CAP.
“I would say that ANC could have an extra name [in the next CAP], like Areas of High Amenity or Areas of High Environmental Value, and you pull in a payment for that.”
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