The ‘degressive area-based income support scheme’ abbreviated to DABIS is what the European Commission has proposed should take over from the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) scheme in the years ahead.

The Commission wants this DABIS to pay farmers an average payment rate of €130/ha to €240/ha in its initial proposals for the 2028-2034 CAP.

Payment rates for farmers would be differentiated around this average baseline but in a major departure from recent decades’ income support schemes, the difference in the payments received by farmers would not be linked to any historical payment rate or level of farm activity.

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The move would abolish the entitlements-based system of income support payments currently operating in Ireland, effectively wiping clean any differentiation in entitlement values that exist between two farmers operating similar systems on similar farmed areas.

A baseline average is to be decided by each member state within the €130/ha to €240/ha window, with per hectare payment increases for factors that are deemed by the Commission to leave a group of farmers “most in need” of supports. Critical to the baseline figure will be the overall CAP budget allocated to each country.

Beyond this baseline, higher levels of funding are to be targeted towards young farmers, small farms, mixed farms, women farmers and farmers in areas of natural constraint.

The Commission’s proposals state that decisions on how much each of these groups’ payment rates would be upped beyond the baseline will be made at national-level.

They also leave the door open to some of these income supports being made in the form of a lump sump for each farmer type, rather than mandating just area-based income supports.

Redistribution plans

In addition to abolishing entitlements, farmers’ DABIS payments are to undergo a process of ‘capping and degressivity’. An outright cap of €100,000 will apply to DABIS payments and this will apply to legal or natural persons, meaning that multi-herd partnerships will be subject to this outright limit the same as individual farmers.

Further payment reductions will be applied in bands to any DABIS payments that would have been worth over €20,000 in what the Commission has proposed.

Any amounts that had been due between €20,000 and €50,000 are to be cut by a quarter; any portions of funding between €50,000 and €75,000 are to be reduced by half; and funds that had been due in the €75,000 to €100,000 range are to be decreased by three-quarters.