As the country looks towards building its own agricultural policy, it is useful to look back on some young farmer measures in the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Within them, there is a certain level of flexibility for each EU Member State.

Under the CAP 2014-2020 national authorities must set aside 2% of their total Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) funding in order to offer young farmers a ‘Young Farmer Payment’ (YFP)bonus of up to 25% on their direct payment for the first five years working in the sector. They are also to be given priority access to the national reserve funding. These are all part of ‘Pillar 1’ of the CAP.

The Young Farmer Payment is estimated to be worth €2.6 billion to young farmers across the EU between 2015 and 2019.

Scotland chose to calculate its YFP at 25% as a flat rate on the average value of entitlements held. The other option, which Northern Ireland used, was to calculate it as 25% of the average direct payment per hectare. Scotland, England and Northern Ireland also put a limit on the number of hectares which qualified for the YFP at 90ha.

The majority of countries chose not to implement any additional eligibility criteria for the YFP in terms of having some sort of agricultural skills or training. Only eight member states and three regions added such criteria (see map).

Some of those member states implement both the criteria related to skills and the criteria related to training as alternatives. But Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Slovakia and Northern Ireland apply the training and skills criteria to all young farmers.

Green

If you take, for example, southern Ireland many young farmers will obtain a level five certificate in agriculture or a level six ‘Green Cert’ in order to qualify for the Young Farmer Payment. The level six qualification is also one of the conditions of stamp duty exemption on the transfer of a farm to a son or daughter.

Students on the full-time level five programme spend a 12-week practical learning period on an approved training farm as part of their one year course.

As you can see from the table, this requirement has increased the number of students going through agricultural colleges in Ireland. Numbers have stayed above a thousand for the past three years.

France

When introducing the young farmer top-up in 2015, France added a condition that applicants needed a level four agricultural qualification, equivalent to the National four in Scotland. This was relaxed last October, when young farmers who were still in training became eligible to apply. There were, however, educational requirements for other national supports to young French farmers long before this. In 1992, the same qualification level became a requirement to claim installation aid, which ranges between €8,000 (£7,100) and €30,000 (£26,600) per farm, as well as young farmers’ tax breaks and low-cost loans.

This drove young people to agricultural colleges at the time, with the number of ag students at all levels rising from just over 132,000 in 1990 to 160,000 in 1995 and nearly 180,000 in 1999 – a 35% jump during that decade. They have been decreasing ever since, however.

The educational top-up requirement may have had an effect in 2015, when the number of French ag students rose by just 0.5%, but other recent years have seen a steady decline with around 166,000 students now in training.

French regulations allow a young farmer to have prior work experience recognised as a formal qualification under certain conditions.

However a 2006 study found that two thirds of young French farmers chose to start farming without the support available to their age group because they were not eligible to some of the requirements, which may include educational qualification.