The definition of who will be considered an active farmer in order to claim payments in the next CAP was one of the first topics addressed at the first of the Department of Agriculture’s town hall meetings on Tuesday night.

Thomas Harty told the 700 farmers who attended the virtual meeting that, as it stands, the EU regulations say an active farmer must be someone who is engaged in at least a minimum level of agricultural activity.

“So the Department’s current thinking is that we will look to get confirmation from applicants, under the BISS [Basic Income Support for Sustainability, the new Basic Payment Scheme] that they themselves are the ones that carry the land, they are the ones taking the agricultural and economic risk with regard to the activity being undertaken,” Harty said.

“For example if you were a grassland farmer, there would be automated checks carried out by the Department. Cross-checks within our system would confirm for example, [the presence of] livestock, and hence [we know] that‘s how you’re maintaining the land.

“And for those farmers where it’s not clear from our systems by what mechanism they themselves are carrying out the activity and carrying the economic risk, we would then have to engage with those farmers and ask them to provide the relevant evidence to show how they themselves are taking the economic risks and carrying out the agricultural activity themselves.”

Harty gave the example of a grassland farmer whose agricultural activity was to make hay or silage to sell it.

“That’s absolutely legitimate agricultural activity,” he said, but added that the Department would need to see some evidence of that.

“We want to, as much as possible, use our own systems to be able to make that determination [of being the active farmer] and then only to ask questions of those where it’s not immediately obvious as to how they themselves are again carrying out the agricultural activity and taking the economic risks.”

Negative list

Paul Savage, assistant secretary general in the Department, added that it had received queries on whether there would be a “negative list” of people or activities that would not be deemed active farmers.

He confirmed that this would likely to be included in the definition of an active farmer for the next CAP.

The Department came in for criticism of the format of the town hall meeting, with all bar the Department personnel placed on mute, and with no visibility of the questions or comments from the attendees.

However, all Department speakers said they would note all feedback from the meeting.

  • Full coverage of the CAP town hall and Department of Agriculture modelling of the financial impact of the proposed schemes will be carried in this week's Irish Farmers Journal.