It is becoming increasingly likely that new farm support schemes will not be fully rolled out in NI before the next Assembly elections in 2022.

Senior DAERA official Norman Fulton told MLAs last week that there will need to be “a significant period of stakeholder engagement” when designing a new agricultural policy for NI.

“It will take time to do that. Whether we can do all of that and squeeze it in before 2022, or whether we need to split it across [two Assembly terms], is a conversation we still need to have,” Fulton said at Stormont’s agriculture committee.

The Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) will be part of the stakeholder engagement and its leadership team told MLAs that both the design of new schemes and the level of funding needed will depend on the longer-term outcome of Brexit.

“We don’t want to rush into designing a policy at this stage until we see how the NI protocol rolls out and how the trade deals roll out. We may need extra support, never mind the existing support,” said UFU chief executive Wesley Aston.

Tailored supports

UFU representatives reiterated that an area-based support will need to be retained in some form as a resilience payment for farmers, with UFU president Ivor Ferguson suggesting it could be between 30% and 50% of current payment levels.

“We could build in various schemes, such as welfare or environmental schemes, so that a farmer could add to that to come back to what their original payment was, and that would be the farmer’s own decision,” Ferguson said.

He told MLAs that the UFU would be consulting its members on new NI agricultural policy, including whether the organisation should back the reintroduction of coupled support (headage payments) for certain sectors.

However, there was a note of caution on coupled payments from Sean McAuley of the NI Agricultural Producers Association (NIAPA).

“We had suckler cow subsidies before and there were others within the food chain who were quick to adjust the end price of the beef in reflection of what the farmer was getting in support,” he said.

Focus widens to replacing RDP funds

Policy makers need to develop a replacement for the Rural Development Programme (RDP) in NI, members of Stormont’s agriculture committee were told last week.

While the current debate around future agricultural policy for NI has focused on replacing direct payments under Pillar 1 of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), there has been less discussion about a successor to the Pillar 2-funded RDP.

The current RDP for NI has an approved budget of £623m and it funds schemes such as the Farm Business Improvement Scheme, the Environmental Farming Scheme and the LEADER programme.

“Our understanding… is that the UK shared prosperity fund will be the mechanism used to replace all EU structural funds, and that will include a strand for rural development,” said Aidan Campbell from the Rural Community Network.

“We are concerned that no proposals for the shared prosperity fund have been put forward by the UK government,” he added.

Shared prosperity fund

It is also unclear whether new rural development funds will be guaranteed within the UK shared prosperity fund.

“We would call for this to be ring-fenced, in line with previous programmes and we also think it is important that there is no gap between the programmes,” said Theresa Canavan from Rural Action.

Brexit concerns for NI meat factories

All EU national workers that were employed by a NI meat factory during the past 10 years would have been unsuccessful under the UK government’s new points-based immigration system.

The system was announced last week and requires applicants to achieve a score of at least 70 points to permanently work in the UK.

Speaking at Stormont, Conall Donnelly from the NI Meat Exporters’ Association (NIMEA) detailed an analysis of the new immigration system by an unnamed meat factory.

“80% of the staff that they brought in during the last 10 years would have gotten 20 points, 15% would have gotten 40 points and 5% would have had 30 points. This is a huge challenge for us,” he said.

Several Brexit-related concerns were aired by Donnelly at the committee meeting, including the NI red meat sector’s inability to use EU trade deals with third countries under the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

He also said that there needs to be a stronger focus on protecting the UK’s internal market, especially trade between NI and Britain.

“On the UK side, it means minimising divergence (with the EU), and on the EU side it means maximising flexibility where possible, so that we are not caught in the middle,” Donnelly said.