The Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers’ Association (NIAPA) has voiced unconditional support for reinstating Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) payments in Northern Ireland.

Speaking at Stormont last week, NIAPA chairman James Lowe said the scheme should be rolled out again, regardless of where the funding has to come from.

He said the “preferred option” was that ANC payments would be funded from “new money” outside the existing agricultural budget.

However, he argued that funding the ANC scheme by cutting other payments should not be ruled out.

Small amount

“The estimated cost of reinstating ANC payments is just over £11m per year, which is roughly 3% of the direct payment budget,” he said. “Regardless of the funding source, ANC payments must proceed as the amount involved is small in the overall terms of the budget.”

A private member’s bill from Sinn Féin MLA Declan McAleer is currently making its way through Stormont. This bill aims to restart the ANC scheme.

NIAPA’s unconditional support for the bill differs from other farming organisations and environmental groups who have briefed MLAs over recent weeks.

For example, the Ulster Farmers’ Union said its support for reinstating ANC payments is conditional on the scheme not being funded by cutting other farm payments.

Previous reforms

Outlining the NIAPA position, Lowe argued that previous reforms of farm schemes in NI “[have] moved support gradually away from the land that most needs it”.

He said that old EU headage payments in the 1980s and 1990s benefited more intensive farms. Area-based payments in the 2000s then put extensive farms at a disadvantage because they had lower entitlement values.

Lowe said convergence from 2015 onwards stopped short of a full flattening of area-based payments, and the recent reforms with beef and suckler payments have benefited farms with higher stocking rates.

“At under 3% of the annual direct payment budget, this bill is a small ask to end a pattern of erosion that has run for half a century and to ensure small family farms on the most constrained land can continue to stay in the rural economy,” he said.

Factories disappointed by NI sheep scheme plan

The body that represents local red-meat processors has meanwhile expressed disappointment with initial proposals from DAERA for a NI sheep-support scheme.

At Stormont last Thursday, Daryl McLaughlin from the Northern Ireland Meat Exporters’ Association (NIMEA) described ongoing discussions about a new sheep scheme as “quite slow”.

“It is likely to start significantly small,” he said. “However, we will engage positively, and we would hope to progress that with [DAERA] officials in the coming weeks.”

McLaughlin said the initial proposals from DAERA “would fall well short of expectations”, adding that the private member’s bill to reinstate ANC payments would be more beneficial for local farmers than the current plan for sheep.

The position from NIMEA is that the ANC payments should be restarted but the scheme should not be funded through cutting other farm payments.

Future payments

DAERA has previously said that, due to ongoing budgetary pressures, any future ANC payments would have to come from the existing NI agricultural budget.

However, McLaughlin said he “did not necessarily agree with that” and suggested “there are other ways that funding could potentially be found”.

“We believe that £10m or £11m could be found from the wider DAERA budget or the NI Executive,” he said.