Environmental requirements should be tied to Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) payments if the scheme is reinstated in NI, a committee of MLAs has been told.

Sinn Féin MLA Declan McAleer is currently trying to move a private member’s bill through the NI Assembly, which aims to set a legal framework to restart the ANC scheme.

However, Peter McEvoy from NI Environment Link said ANC payments should “not be unconditional income support” for farmers in severely disadvantaged areas (SDA).

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“There has to be conditional environmental outcomes if this bill is to be successful,” he told MLAs at Stormont last week.

McEvoy said there was a “strong case” for supporting farmers on marginal land, as SDA farms are “important for nature” but are “financially fragile”.

“Their viability matters not just for the environment and for farming, but socially for our landscapes and for rural communities,” he said.

Since the previous ANC scheme ended in 2018, there have been no minimum stocking rate requirements for NI farmers outside of agri-environment schemes.

However, MLAs were told that under-grazing is becoming a bigger issue on marginal land and it is leaving habitats in poor environmental condition.

McEvoy said the opposite trend is happening in lowland areas where farms are becoming more heavily stocked.

“One area is overstocked and one area is understocked. This is a double threat of intensification and abandonment happening at once,” he said.

NFFN

In their presentation, the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) said they would not support plans to reinstate the ANC scheme if it was funded by cutting other farm schemes.

In particular, Cormac Dolan from NFFN said he had “a big fear” that money for ANC payments would come at the expense of agri-environment schemes.

“I think that could be quite disastrous in terms of taking something that’s tied to environmental outcomes and giving it to something that isn’t,” he said.

Dolan said that linking ANC payments to environmental measures would help “justify government spend” on the scheme.

“I think it could be public money put to really good use and it be secured for the farmers in the long term,” he said.

Farmers ‘nervous’ about joining DAERA schemes

The vice chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network in NI does not use DAERA funded schemes to help deliver environmental measures on her farm.

At Stormont last week, Katesbridge farmer Louise Skelly revealed that she received a £6,500 fine following an inspection under a previous NI agri-environment scheme.

“It left me very nervous of going back into any other schemes.

“The things that we have been doing in recent years have been done off our own bat and in partnership with other organisations rather than DAERA,” she said.

At Stormont’s agriculture committee last Thursday, MLAs were told that payments, rules, and inspections were all factors that can stop farmers from joining environmental schemes.

Peter McEvoy from NI Environment Link pointed out that payment rates under current agri-environment schemes are designed to only cover “income foregone”.

“A farmer is not making any money from it. He is only being compensated for the loss of production that he may have had on that habitat. That is an issue,” he said.