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GLAS farmers who sowed wild bird cover on disadvantaged land could lose out on their 2019 Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) payment, it has emerged.
Land under wild bird cover has been deemed to be tillage land in the 2019 ANC scheme.
Under the new scheme, a District Electoral Division (DED) is ineligible for ANC payments if it has more than 15% tillage land, or a combination of over 8% arable coverage and between 1.4 and 1.8 livestock units per hectare.
Many farmers chose wild bird cover as an option to get into GLAS or move between its tiers.
More than 50,000ac of land nationwide are under wild bird cover. However, that choice could now cost farmers.
Some livestock farmers have also been knocked out of ANC due to the presence of tillage farmers in their DED, according to Peter Lynch from Donegal IFA.
“It’s the fine-tuning that’s tripping people up. People are falling foul of that,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.
Ironically, ANC land sown under tillage crops in the 2019 scheme will still be eligible to receive a disadvantaged area payment.
“It’s giving it to the tillage farmers with one hand and taking it away with the other,” said Lynch.
Where tillage land has been reseeded with grass, the Department is using a period of five years to determine whether that area should be eligible for ANC or not.
Farmers have until 8 April to get their ANC appeal in.
Once any farmer from a townland lodges an appeal, then the whole townland is automatically appealed.
The Department is currently responding to farmers who appealed with details of why their townland was excluded.
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