All farmers who applied will be accepted into the Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM). Acceptance letters for the SIM will begin to issue in the coming days, according to Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon.

Making the announcement he said: “The Straw Incorporation Measure has again proven to be a very popular scheme with tillage farmers, with over 73,000 hectares of cereals and oilseed rape straw submitted for chopping and incorporating in 2026. The claims submitted are, however, in excess of the €10m budget for the scheme.

“I want to ensure all farmers have access to the scheme and so I will seek to identify the extra funding to allow this to happen. SIM brings benefits not only to farmers, in terms of the financial support, but it also is hugely positive for the environmental sustainability of the sector.”

He added that farmers can still withdraw from the measure: “While farmers will receive their acceptance letters for SIM in the coming days, it is possible for farmers to withdraw from the scheme at this point, where they have identified a need for the straw.”

The letters will now issue mid-harvest, following a number of weeks of uncertainty surrounding the measure. In recent days, the minister told the Irish Farmers Journal that “all possible options are being considered”.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that all farmers will be paid, in full, for all parcels chopped and incorporated under the scheme.

The cereal straw payment under the SIM is €250/ha and the oilseed rape straw payment is €150/ha in the SIM.

Over-subscribed

Some 73,172ha of straw were entered into the SIM with BISS applications for 2026 before mid-May.

The Irish Farmers Journal estimated that about €16.8m would be needed to pay all applicants. However, some farmers have already pulled parcels out of the SIM and will likely continue to do so, if they find a market for that straw.

The annual budget for the SIM is €10m, but this has always been topped up when oversubscribed.

However, acceptance letters into the scheme were not issued in June and harvest is now well underway. Farmers have been chopping straw without acceptance letters.

The winter barley and winter oats harvest are now over for the majority – approximately 13,500ha of these crops were down for chopping in the SIM. The winter oilseed rape harvest is underway and 14,318ha of that crop were entered into the scheme.

Winter wheat has also been cut and spring barley has been harvested in small amounts.

With so many crops cut and no acceptance letters issued, tillage farmers worried that the money would not be found for the SIM. The SIM has a ring-fenced budget of €50m for the five years of the CAP.

Changes to SIM applications

Farmers who have applied for the SIM and wish to withdraw a parcel or a number of parcels, or who made a mistake, can contact the Department of Agriculture.

You can contact sim@agriculture.gov.ie or telephone 057 8674422.