Livestock trailers and slurry equipment received the highest levels of funding under the Tier I capital grant scheme, the Irish Farmers Journal can reveal.

Figures obtained from DAERA show that 1,149 farm businesses in NI received £1.85m of grant funding for livestock trailers over the first two tranches of the Tier I element of the Farm Business Improvement Scheme.

There were six different items for livestock trailers in each tranche of the scheme. The most popular trailers had sheep decks and were over 4.3m in body length, with 344 farms receiving funding for this item over both tranches.

Across all slurry-spreading equipment, £1.40m of grant funding was paid for 579 items, such as slurry pumps, tankers, umbilical systems and low-emission spreading equipment. The most popular individual item in both tranches of Tier I was perforated rubber slat mats. Overall, 534 farm businesses received funding, equating to £1.09m for this item. A similar level of money was paid out for diet feeders, with £1.08m covering 182 claims across the two tranches.

Heat detection and automated animal identification technologies received just over £1m of funding. Other dairy technologies also ranked high up the Tier I funding list, such as milk meters (£491,579) and concentrate feeders (£418,440).

Cow cubicles, mats and mattresses received £758,738 of funding, £574,239 was paid for slurry scrapers, £492,019 for bulk feed bins, and £428,901 of funding was for various cattle handling items.

The figures also show that some items proved less popular. For example, covers for above-ground slurry stores were added into the second tranche of the scheme, but only three farm businesses made claims, equating to a total of £12,400.

Overall, claims from 1,462 farm businesses worth £7.08m were made under the first tranche of Tier I. By 21 May 2019, a total of 1,528 claims were made in the second tranche, which equated to £7.24m.

Competitive grant

The Tier I scheme provided up to 40% grant funding for equipment and machinery costing between £5,000 and £30,000.

However, both tranches were oversubscribed, and applications had to be selected competitively based on points-based selection criteria.

In practice this meant that farmers had to apply for less than DAERA’s maximum grant (40% of each item’s reference price) to avail of selection points under “value for money” to be successful.

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Maximum grant of 35% under Tier 1 FBIS

No budget for third tranche of Tier I