Farmers this week have just been alerted to new land management rules coming in under what is called ‘GAEC 2 – protection of carbon-rich soils, wetlands and peatlands that store more carbon than other soils’.

The EU says these must be protected. In order to do this, planning permission must be requested for new drains, no ploughing deeper than 30cm is allowed, and these fields can only be reseeded once in every four years. Some 35,000 farmers are impacted.

In a strongly worded statement after the announcement this week, the IFA president Francie Gorman criticised Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon for not securing a further extension to the introduction of “problematic” new rules for farmers on peaty soils in 2025. Gorman said the European Commission plans to bring forward a simplification package for administering CAP and this should have been done first. Clearly the honeymoon period for Minister Heydon is over. This rule affects some EU countries more than others. There aren’t that many bogs in Spain. So what is this all about?

Conditionality explained

In order to receive EU income support, farmers must respect a basic set of rules. The interplay between these rules and the support provided to farmers is called conditionality, previously known as cross-compliance.

The rules farmers are expected to comply with are called statutory management requirements (SMRs) and good agriculture and environmental conditions (GAECs). The SMRs apply to all farmers whether or not they receive support under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The GAECs apply only to farmers receiving support under the CAP. That’s the vast majority of Irish farmers.

In June 2021, following extensive negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission, agreement was reached on reform of CAP. This agreement was formally adopted on 2 December 2021, and the current CAP (2023 to 2027) entered into force on 1 January 2023.

Compared to the previous CAP (2014-2022), the rules for conditionality (cross-compliance) were tightened up.

Why is this GAEC 2 rule only kicking in for us in 2025? While established in 2021, only eight member states applied their rules of GAEC 2 in 2023 (year one of new CAP). The rest requested a derogation until a 2024 or 2025 start date. The derogation was allowed to let member states get their homework done on identifying the areas that were going to be affected by this – getting maps sorted out, etc. So now it’s 2025 and Minister Heydon says Ireland will apply for an amendment to the CAP strategic plan already submitted and implement GAEC 2.

So what do we know? We know the new rules around getting planning permission for drainage, a ban on deep ploughing and limited reseeding. There are still many unknowns. For a start, farmers can’t look up if any of their fields are in a GAEC 2 area yet, despite the fact the minister wants them to start submitting BISS 2025 applications. While the rules on the face of it for some don’t look too onerous, the very existence of this ‘designation’ under GAEC 2 draws a line in the sand. It opens up this land area for further tightening of the rules. Some are suggesting it’s ‘land designation’ by the back door. Will it impact land price? Previous designations have drastically reduced the market value of affected lands due to the limitations on economic activity. As for environmental achievement, almost 30 years on from Natura 2000 designations, 80% of these habitats are in unfavourable condition. From an EU and State perspective, this is complete failure.

If planning permission is required, where do farmers apply and who administers and pays for this? This type of ‘cloak and dagger announcement’ where farmers don’t actually know if they are impacted and yet expected to comply seems nonsense. To say in the terms and conditions of the scheme that it is an applicant’s responsibility to establish if they have any GAEC 2 land and to know the management rules around that is a bit rich.

In March last year we saw European protests and amendments subsequently made to GAEC 6, 7 and 8. Clearly an amendment isn’t going to make peaty soil a loam or a mineral soil from now on as far at the EU is concerned. Minister Heydon and EU Commissioners should know by now that enforcing rules without farmer co-operation does not work.