Reading through some of the responses made by organisations to the latest public consultation on proposals for the next Nutrients Action Programme (NAP) to 2030, it is striking just how complicated this all could become. In particular, there are the new banding requirements based on milk yield, which are likely to push more dairy farmers over the 170kg limit for manure nitrogen per hectare.

For any livestock farmer over this limit, there are a number of options to help them remain compliant, but in many instances, it will also involve detailed calculations and submission of data to the department.

The valid response to that concern is if you don’t give farmers options, then there is a danger of ending up with a simple set of rules which negatively impact a lot of farms.

But either way, farmers will need significant support and guidance through the next NAP process, while given time to comply with new regulations.

There are also lessons that can be learned from other schemes and in particular, the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS). While it has provided very useful information for farmers, it didn’t always come in a form that was easily digestible or understood.

The end point of the scheme is essentially to undertake a nutrient management plan for the farm, but doing that on the DAERA online system is not a simple process.

Next up is the Bovine Genetics Project, which offers farmers the potential to get their herds genotyped and make significant genetic progress on their farms. However, with that comes a raft of different indexes for dairy farmers dependent on system, as well as a dairy beef index, a commercial beef value index and maternal and terminal indexes for suckler cows and beef bulls.

Taking everything together, there is an incredible amount of data coming at farmers and a real danger of information overload.

The need for a well-resourced farm advisory service at CAFRE has perhaps never been greater.