Re-coupling a chunk of farm payments or requiring a minimum level of farmgate output for claiming CAP supports could help solve the active farmer debate, IFA president Francie Gorman has said.
Gorman stated that all farmers who actively farm, from lower stocked hill farmers to higher stocked lowland farmers, should be rewarded for their efforts, but warned that “what we’re doing at the moment with the current CAP policy is rewarding people for owning land, not farming it”.
The IFA leader was critical of the current active farmer definition that he said pays out CAP income supports “for doing very little” as he indicated the IFA must debate in detail who should be eligible for payments.
“If you could have a level of activity defined, whether it’s a minimum level of output or coupling, that almost solves the problem.
“If you went to minimal level of output on the farm or per hectare. A certain length of time working on the farm can be defined as well,” he said.
IFA senior policy executive Shane Whelan said a “general agreement” is emerging that the 0.1 livestock unit/ha threshold in place for many current CAP schemes “is too low by way of a broad-brush approach” to assess whether a farmer is payment-eligible.
SHARING OPTIONS