Area-based payments where the same rates apply to all farmers in NI is Sinn Féin’s preferred option for future farm support.

“We want to broadly retain the architecture of the CAP. We want to move towards an equal rate for single farm payment,” said Sinn Féin MLA Declan McAleer.

Speaking to farmers during an online meeting last week, the chair of Stormont’s agriculture committee appeared supportive of various decisions that Edwin Poots has made as Agriculture Minister.

This includes reducing the number of farm inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic, removing greening requirements and issuing basic payments in full during October.

“There is a number of things that the minister did which we are not content with. One of them is stopping the transition towards an equal rate or flat rate single farm payment,” McAleer maintained.

The West Tyrone MLA did not give specific details of what type of farm support schemes would be introduced if Sinn Féin held the agriculture portfolio at Stormont again.

However, it is likely to be similar to what the party wants rolled out in the Republic of Ireland, and Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy was clear about what he would do if he became agriculture minister in Dublin.

“We want to move towards a front-loaded, flat-rate payment per hectare (ha). For the first 30ha, a farmer would receive around €400/ha. For every hectare after that, they would receive around €250/ha,” he said.

“We would set an upper limit of €60,000, so that would be the maximum that a farmer could draw down,” Carthy added.

ANC

Declan McAleer is currently working on a bill in Stormont which aims to reinstate the Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) scheme in NI.

The 2017 scheme year was the last year of the ANC scheme when it had a budget of £8m from Stormont funds. Before that, payments for farmers in Severely Disadvantaged Areas (SDA) were funded for a two-year period by a £20m annual budget from the Rural Development Programme.

McAleer maintained that it was a “red herring” to suggest that a new ANC scheme would result in basic payment cuts for all farmers in NI.

“At the end of any financial year, there is always funding available. I am not saying that a new ANC scheme should be £20m, but £20m within the budget that Stormont operates with is not a massive amount of money,” he said.

In the longer term, McAleer said that a specific top up payment for farmers in disadvantaged areas should be part of future agricultural policy in NI.