The CAP Strategic Plan 2023-2027, which comes into play on 1 January 2023, includes significant changes under land eligibility classification.

Sub-features such as scrub, trees, woodland, habitat and rock, which are deemed to be delivering a biodiversity benefit, may now be deemed eligible for the purpose of receiving your basic payment, or what will be known as the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) under the new CAP.

These beneficial features can now comprise up to 50% of the reference area of that parcel (minus deductions for any artificial features such as roads roads, buildings and waterbodies) and be deemed eligible for payment. Scrub is an area characterized by vegetation dominated by woody plants, but it may include grasses.

The topic was raised at CAP information meetings held by the Irish Farmers Journal in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and AIB in Tuam and Cootehill over the last week.

The Department’s David Buckley outlined examples of the new criteria and the impact this might have for farmers.

“Say for example if you have a 1ha parcel and there is 0.4ha of scattered scrub or scrub in one corner, the eligible area of that parcel will still be 1ha from a direct payments perspective.

David Buckley, Department of Agriculture.

“In any hectare, you can have up to 50% of beneficial features and the eligible area will still be a hectare.”

Outlining what happens when the area of beneficial features goes above 50%, David said: “Once it goes above 50%, we can say in this case it is 0.6ha – 60% – we take off the 0.6ha and your eligible area is 0.4ha.

“Once it goes above 70% [of the parcel area] it’s completely ineligible.” This will be shown on a farmer’s LPIS maps.

Farming activity

An important aspect highlighted is that there must be farming activity on such parcels for them to be considered under the new land eligibility classification. “There must be a farming activity on it, so it is not a case of me having, say a 1ha parcel and 49% scrub on it, but neither man nor beast ever goes into it. There must be a farming activity, whether that is, for example, topping or grazing with sheep or cattle.”

It is important to note that the allowance to count lands with greater than 50% of such beneficial features applies to permanent grassland only. Arable lands and permanent crops, where the percentage exceeds 50%, are deemed ineligible. There is an exemption that may be applied to lands falling within the 70% to 100% bracket in the Burren/Aran regions, which are a unique karst limestone landscape.

Red lining scrub

David acknowledged that the new eligibility criteria is a big change to the current CAP, where scrub or other features outlined above were ‘red lined’ and excluded from the eligible area for payment of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).

This process will continue for the purposes of quantifying the volume of scrub.

To be clear, the beneficial features totalling up to 50% of a parcel will be used for the purposes of receiving payments under the BISS (which replaces BPS), the new eco-scheme and the Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS).

The new Complementary Income Support for Young Farmers (CISYF) will be based on eligible hectares – so once the land is eligible, then it can be counted for CISYF up to a maximum of 50 such hectares.