IFA soft fruit chairman Jimmy Kearns said the opening of the Horticulture Exceptional Aid package is positive, but the exclusion of soft fruit growers is unacceptable.

The fact that vegetable growers’ applications appear to be based on land declared in their BPS application will exclude up to 80% of land farmed by larger progressive growers, who operate share farming arrangements with landowners (rent the majority of their land). This needs to be revisited.

Kearns said that inexplicably, soft fruit growers remain excluded. The IFA raised this when the scheme was first announced back in April. Soft fruit growers are combatting the same input costs as all other horticultural growers and those with heated glasshouses even more so.