The new lime grant is a welcome support, available to all farmers. Well, almost all farmers. If you’re a farmer in derogation, you’re out.

Furthermore, if you’re a farmer who has an organic nitrogen level of less than 170/kg/ha, but have achieved that in part through the export of slurry, you’re also out.

It’s the latest straw in the wind for more heavily stocked farmers.

Currently, if you’re in derogation, you can’t avail of TAMS for low emissions slurry spreaders. But the tillage farmer you export to can, and can get grant aid to build a tank to store the slurry.

This week, we learned the ranking system for TAMS III is weighted in favour of less intensive and disadvantaged area farmers.

Meanwhile, livestock farmers short of slurry storage can’t get grant aid to build it.

Some of this is due to EU regulations, but it is frustrating farmers, and seems contradictory to them.

Scale is also now becoming a dividing line.

We have seen TAMS support for dairy equipment restricted to 120 cows, or 160 if in a partnership.

This cut-off is linked to the ‘typical dairy herd’ of 90 cows, according to Minister Charlie McConalogue.

We now have a debate about what constitutes a family farm. It mirrors long debate during the Ciolos CAP reforms around what constituted an active farmer. That ultimately led nowhere; the rules around so-called ‘armchair farmers’ hardly changed.

It might be a little easier to describe a ‘family farmer’, but the debate will still be fractious and divisive.

It’s pretty hard to be a viable tillage farmer on 35ha, or indeed on 100ha.

Vegetable growers have massive machinery costs that demand scale.

Similarly, the scale of the typical pig and poultry farm is on a different level to that of the average drystock or indeed dairy farm.

There is also the lingering sense that this is all a little late.

If there was a sense that very large farms, farms that don’t easily fit the ‘family farm’ model, were less deserving of support and encouragement, some clearer signalling during the years of rapid dairy expansion would have been appropriate.

Intensity

Similarly, intensity on a scale that is now being moved towards ‘second-tier citizen’ status has been encouraged for a generation.

It isn’t fair to level all that criticism at this minister, it really was like this when he got here.

However, as the man in situ, he will carry the can.