New rules published by the EU are to make farms with more than 75% of their land in grass exempt from crop diversification and Environmental Focus Area (EFA) requirements.

The changes, which came into effect at the start of 2018, are for all EU member states.

The rules affect claimants whose land is made up of more than 75% rough grazing, temporary or permanent grass.

This will be welcomed by farmers who currently curtail their cropped area below the 30ha threshold to avoid EFA and crop diversification requirements. As long as farmers keeps crops below 25% of their claimed area, they will be able to increase their cropped area.

Nitrogen fixing

Other changes coming into effect include increasing the weighting factor for EFA Nitrogen Fixing Crops from 0.7 to 1.0 – making it the same as for EFA Fallow.

Furthermore, farmers whose arable land is made up of over 75% temporary grass, fallow or leguminous crop will also be exempt from Crop Diversification and EFA requirements.

NFU Scotland has reminded farmers that the EFA Fallow period begins this coming Monday 15 January. All agricultural production on fallow needs to stop as of midnight on Sunday – ie all livestock removed and no further field operations.