A recent comment by Irish Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed that he would like to see a change to land eligibility rules that would allow “farmers to retain non-productive green features” is noteworthy, if perhaps coming a little too late.

In the years after the introduction of area-based payments in 2005, a number of countries, including NI, were hit with large penalties for deficiencies in their mapping systems and, in particular, for allowing farmers to claim payments on ineligible land.

Granted some of it was justified. Land covered in concrete or areas that had clearly been abandoned were correctly removed. There were also examples of fields being initially mapped out into the sea.

But where the land eligibility rules got carried away was around issues such as a small amount of scrub in a field, or a hedge that was slightly overgrown.

While the rules did allow a hedge to be 2m wide on either side, in practice some hedges were probably cut back unnecessarily for fear of deductions being made to direct payments.

Some of the rules made little sense back then, and make even less sense now as the focus shifts onto encouraging farmers to plant more trees, etc. In NI we have approximately 740,000 fields and an average field size just over 3ac. We also have in the region of 170,000km of field boundaries, mostly made up of hedges.

Drive through much of Britain and into continental Europe you will see a very different landscape, with large tracks of bare land, and many soils fast heading towards desert status.

In NI we do have environmental challenges ahead, and as farmers we will have to do more to cut ammonia emissions and reduce phosphorus getting into waterways, but in recent times there has been a lot of negativity directed towards farmers around how we work and interact with the environment. Those pointing the finger need to look around first.

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