Despite MLAs at Stormont voting in favour of a motion that called on Agriculture minister Edwin Poots to re-introduce an Area of Natural Constraint (ANC) scheme, the reality is that it won’t be happening soon.

The scheme was worth £20m to severely disadvantaged area (SDA) farmers in 2016 and 2017, or £56.47/ha on the first 200 ha.

Removing it was essentially a cost-saving exercise by government, justified by the fact that moving to a flat rate area payment was putting an additional €4m per year into the SDA.

That additional money has come off farmers in the lowland and the disadvantaged area

So by 2019, SDA famers were receiving €20m more than they did when the new basic payment entitlements were introduced in 2015.

That additional money has come off farmers in the lowland and the disadvantaged area, so any suggestion that an ANC scheme in 2021 should be funded by cutting all direct payments, and re-targeting this at SDA farms, is a non-runner.

Even though SDA farms have lower margins per hectare, they have larger farms and higher direct payments. Projected 2019-2020 incomes for cattle and sheep farms in the lowland are lower than farms in the less favoured area.

There is still an opportunity to further flatten payments in 2021 and 2022

But at the same time, farmers in the SDA are right to feel aggrieved that entitlements have been frozen in 2020. When a seven-year transition to a flat rate payment by 2021 was agreed by ministers in 2014, there was no mention that values would be fixed at year five of the process.

There is still an opportunity to further flatten payments in 2021 and 2022.

But perhaps the key issue in the longer term is how all farmers are supported, and especially those in the SDA.

Marginal

Livestock farming in these areas is economically marginal at best, and without income support there is a real risk of land abandonment. That would have negative consequences for rural communities and the environment.

While some “experts” promote rewilding, if these areas are left, it produces a mat of overgrown heather and dead rushes – not the imaginary mixed forests and wild flower meadows.

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