Over 70,000ha of straw are to be chopped under the Department of Agriculture’s Straw Incorporation Measure (SIM) in 2023. That's an increase of 34% from 2022.

This means the budget of €10m will be required to increase by over 50%. The Irish Farmers Journal understands that the required budget increase will be delivered.

The Department of Agriculture has told the Irish Farmers Journal that preliminary figures suggest an estimated 56,700ha of cereal straw will be chopped and approximately 13,900ha of oilseed rape straw will go under the knife.

This equates to a total of 70,600ha.

Bringing those figures into bales, winter cereal area is back and spring barley straw yields look likely to be back, so placing straw yields at an estimated nine round 4X4 bales/acre or 22 bales/ha, this is equivalent to about 1.25m bales exiting the system and being incorporated into the soil to store carbon.

Budget

The budget for the SIM decreased to €10m in 2023, from €15m in 2022. This means the scheme is currently oversubscribed.

However, it is expected that the Department of Agriculture will increase the money available for the scheme. In 2022, the scheme paid out over €12m and over 52,000ha were chopped.

At those preliminary figures for 2023, over €16m would be needed to pay all 3,440 applicants – approximately €14m for cereal straw and €2m for oilseed rape straw.

Targets

This year’s figures mean that the 2030 target for straw incorporation in the Government’s Climate Action Plan has now been exceeded by a significant amount.

The 2025 target was to incorporate 35,000ha of cereal area and the 2030 target was to incorporate 55,000ha of cereal straw.

At the current preliminary figures, the target has been exceeded.

Straw demand

Demand for straw is expected to be good this season, after a slow start in 2022 demand picked up in the wet spring of 2023.

Speaking to farmers, many have said that they put poor spring barley fields into the chopping scheme (the SIM), as the straw yield does not look like it is going to be good from those crops.

Update

On Wednesday, 12 July the Department stated: "The budget is set and the terms and conditions stipulate that ranking and selection is to be used in the event of the scheme being oversubscribed. The Department is currently considering all the options and will be communicating with applicants shortly."