Up to £50m of the total farm support budget for NI can be linked to agricultural production, DAERA Minister Edwin Poots has confirmed.

In an address to the NI Institute of Agricultural Science, Minister Poots said around one-sixth of the current £300m budget will be “dedicated to people who are active farmers”.

“If you don’t have livestock, or you are not producing a crop, don’t expect a payment at the end of the year for tidying your grass up and selling a few round bales,” Poots said.

“I seriously want to discourage people from keeping land in order to get a subsidy off government, when there are farmers who are struggling to get enough land to make their farm viable,” he added.

If I can navigate it through the Assembly, the change will take place from 2023 onwards

Although DAERA is expected to publish proposals for new farm support payments in the coming days, it will be 2023 at the earliest before any significant changes are applied to the current Basic Payment Scheme.

“If I can navigate it through the Assembly, the change will take place from 2023 onwards,” Minister Poots maintained.

The Lagan Valley MLA also said NI farmers would have a “smooth transition” to a new payment system which “will allow an adequate timeframe to adjust”.

While the likes of headage payments could be part of production-linked schemes, there will likely be additional requirements for NI farmers to be eligible for the money.

Minister Poots suggested that schemes could be used to incentivise slaughtering cattle at younger ages, reduce average age of first calving in suckler and dairy herds, and increase the longevity of dairy cows.

Debate

“These are all questions that we need to debate and identify a way forward, but I do think that efficient farming can quite easily marry good environmental practice,” he said.

Essential

Proving that farm support payments in NI are delivering environmental benefits will also be essential for securing funding from the UK government beyond the next general election, which is expected in 2024.

“To be secure beyond it, we need to make sure that our agricultural policy is a farming with the environment payment. It therefore involves taking a little pain. I want it to be a little pain, but some people want it to be an awful lot of pain for farming,” Minister Poots added.