In the movies, you know someone is in serious bother when they are handed a shovel and encouraged, at gunpoint, to dig by moonlight.

I was reminded of this stereotypical Hollywood scenario when hearing the reaction of farm advisers to the workload they face in relation to ACRES compliance.

They have just completed a hectic few months preparing the first BISS applications for over 125,000 farmers, with eco schemes and ACRES information, along with renewals of the Tillage Inclusion Measure and the Straw Incorporation Measure.

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Now the same few hundred Teagasc and private advisers are expected to walk somewhere in the region of 600,000ha of land over the next couple of months. That’s one and a half million acres in old money.

Scorecards assessing the ecological integrity of grass fields, peatland or scrubland, and ranking each field from one to 10, must be completed. On commonage, the habitats must be assessed.

All this has to take place by August. The summer will fly by more quickly for advisers than for schoolchildren (or their parents).

It doesn’t seem doable, and now we’re hearing of penalties being potentially applied on farmers if advisers are unable to complete the scorecards.

But that is only half the problem. The information submitted on behalf of farmers by their advisers now becomes the baseline. These scorecards are being completed in a very pressured timescale, with limited training. They will be imperfect, that’s a guarantee.

We have seen the Department of Agriculture consistently return to farmers’ declaration of land eligibility with penalties and, in some cases, loss of entitlements.

EU pressure

The Department isn’t doing this out of vindictiveness – it is required to pursue such actions by Brussels. Indeed, the Commission has threatened massive fines on Ireland for not being vigorous enough in relation to land eligibility.

Currently, a few hundred farmers are answering queries going back to 2016. For context, in June 2016, Robbie Brady scored the winner for Ireland against Italy in the European Championships and the UK voted for Brexit. It’s a while ago.

Ironically, the very things farmers are now being encouraged to do in ACRES are the things that would incur BPS penalties if they did them back then.

Again, that is not the Department’s fault, it’s the system designed in Brussels.

But it begs the question, how many farmers will face penalties down the line off the back of the scorecards being prepared as we speak? And for how long? Digging their own graves. Would anybody else accept such a system?