A review of disadvantaged areas will be completed by June 2017.
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Next year’s ANC payment could be the last for some unlucky farmers who lose disadvantaged area status. New areas will operate in two years’ time for the 2018 scheme.
Under new criteria, some farms currently qualifying will no longer do so, while others could become newly eligible. So some farmers who received payment for 40 years – under Headage and then the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme – will lose out. Others could receive payment for the first time.
Also, the total area eligible for ANC fell by 300,000ha or 10% in a model created some years ago by the Department of Agriculture. However, it has since negotiated eased criteria in Brussels. For example, an area can qualify if 60% of its farmland has a physical handicap, not the 65% proposed earlier. More recent modelling in Northern Ireland cut the eligible area there by 10%.
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The new criteria focus only on physical handicaps on farmland and exclude socioeconomic factors. The Department is now carrying out the review and must complete it by June 2017.
Some 100,000 farmers receive ANC payments averaging €2,300. IFA rural development chair Joe Brady wants existing recipients protected in the review.
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Next year’s ANC payment could be the last for some unlucky farmers who lose disadvantaged area status. New areas will operate in two years’ time for the 2018 scheme.
Under new criteria, some farms currently qualifying will no longer do so, while others could become newly eligible. So some farmers who received payment for 40 years – under Headage and then the Disadvantaged Areas Scheme – will lose out. Others could receive payment for the first time.
Also, the total area eligible for ANC fell by 300,000ha or 10% in a model created some years ago by the Department of Agriculture. However, it has since negotiated eased criteria in Brussels. For example, an area can qualify if 60% of its farmland has a physical handicap, not the 65% proposed earlier. More recent modelling in Northern Ireland cut the eligible area there by 10%.
The new criteria focus only on physical handicaps on farmland and exclude socioeconomic factors. The Department is now carrying out the review and must complete it by June 2017.
Some 100,000 farmers receive ANC payments averaging €2,300. IFA rural development chair Joe Brady wants existing recipients protected in the review.
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