New legislation to transform farm support payments in NI will not be introduced before the next Assembly elections in May 2022, DAERA Minister Edwin Poots has confirmed.

It means that major changes to how direct payments are distributed in NI are unlikely to be rolled out before 2023 at the very earliest.

“I have a number of pieces of legislation that I intend to bring forward, but I do not think that I can achieve an Agriculture Act in the proposed lifetime of the current Assembly,” Minister Poots said.

The DUP politician is pushing on with a series of minor changes to the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) from next year (see page 8) and he has also started preparations on the long-term structure of support schemes for NI farmers.

Speaking at Stormont, Minister Poots said that he plans to seek views from industry and the public next year about using a proportion of the agriculture budget to fund coupled payments for suckler cows and breeding ewes.

“It is important to stress that that would not be a return to the coupled payments of the past. We need to design in features that will help achieve the goals of increased productivity and environmental sustainability,” he told MLAs.

The minister reiterated his view that an area-based scheme should be retained as a resilience payment, although at lower levels than the current BPS.

Environmental measures will also be a key feature of long-term farm support in NI, particularly in upland areas.

“We have the opportunity to create an approach whereby management of the environment becomes a profit centre within a farm business rather than a cost centre,” Minister Poots maintained.

The Lagan Valley MLA said that he wants support payments to be “spread more evenly” and not weighted towards large landowners.

However, he also said that payment should not be targeted at people who “engage in the hobby of farming”.

“I want to support the people who are reliant on farming for a living,” the minister said.

Whilst Minister Poots is keen to get the ball rolling on future farm support, it will ultimately be up to the next Minister at DAERA to bring forward an Agriculture Act with the exact details of new schemes.

Under the current, D’Hondt system of allocating ministries at Stormont, that person could come from any political party that takes a seat in the next NI Executive.