Full payments under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) will be issued to NI farmers later this month, DAERA has confirmed.

A department spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal that payments will begin to be issued from Monday 18 October. In previous years, BPS payments arrived in farmers’ bank accounts within five working days.

This will be the second year in a row when full payments have been issued in October. Prior to the UK leaving the EU in January 2020, NI farmers received 70% of their BPS money in October, with the remainder issued in December.

Payments for the 2021 scheme year will be 6.2% higher than last year due to £15.5m of unspent COVID-19 support funds being reallocated across all BPS entitlements in NI.

New system

Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots has indicated that an area-based payment as part of a new system of farm support in NI will not be based on existing BPS entitlements.

Speaking at Stormont on Tuesday, Minister Poots pointed out that current BPS entitlements are mainly based on farming activity prior to 2005 when area-based payments were first introduced in NI.

“Entitlements should be based on activity now, not on something that happened 18 to 20 years ago,” the DUP politician said.

Minister Poots said there will “probably” be new agricultural policy in place for 2022 or 2023. However, there is a growing expectation within the industry that it will be 2024 before significant changes to farm support come into effect in NI.

“We have a system that has been there for a while. Is it a bad system? No. Is it a system that can be bettered? Yes, so let us get a better system,” Minister Poots said.