The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) has called on Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue to extend upcoming deadlines for ACRES and revisit the issues surrounding the "unworkable" catch crop grazing requirements.

The ACRES measures that require the establishment of protected margins and sowing of suitable seed mix by 31 August needs to be extended due to challenging sowing conditions, IFA rural development committee chair Michael Biggins has said.

“We’ve had the wettest July on record and things haven’t been much better in recent weeks, so soil conditions are heavy and unsuitable for sowing in many parts of the country.

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"There are many who haven’t yet had the opportunity to get seed into the ground or protected fences erected,” he highlighted.

He has called on the Minister to push the deadline out for a few weeks to let the ground dry up and give affected farmers some breathing space.

Catch crops

The sowing deadline for catch crops of 15 September is fast approaching and will not be met, according to Biggins.

"There is a lot of the 22,000ha committed to catch crops among ACRES still to be planted.

“For those that have catch crops planted before there was any awareness of these new regulations, the Minister needs to confirm and give full assurance to farmers that they will not be in breach of GAEC 6 conditionality where these new catch crop grazing requirements are not fully met.

"With AMS, we have the technology available, rather than rely on inspector interpretation and/or unnecessarily flood the appeals system in the back end,” he said.

The amendments, he said, made by the Department to their catch crops requirements are a positive first step and of potential benefit to mixed farms with adequate adjoining area, but it offers little to address the concerns of specialist tillage farms or farms which already have catch crops in the ground.

A further review and immediate introduction of practical solutions is needed, he added.

“Imposing that the lie-back can only be in grass will make the growing of catch crops uneconomic and unworkable for specialist tillage growers, not to mention having a massive impact on the store lamb trade too,” Biggins said.