Farmers are facing real hardships due to weather events and spiralling costs.

So how do we make financially sensitive family farms more viable and create an environment that gives optimism for young farmers for their entire farming career and not just a short-lived sugar rush?

Coupled payments in the next CAP can not exceed 20%, possibly 30%.

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So how do we steer the payments towards active farmers?

Say 30% coupling, then pay for actions.

Actions may include, just to name but a few:

  • Spreading slurry with low-emission slurry-spreading technology.
  • Retaining slurry for longer and spreading it closer to the spring growth curve.
  • Early slaughter.
  • Appropriate stocking rate on hills and lowland.
  • Straw incorporation scheme.
  • Transfer of dung and slurry from livestock farms back to arable ground.
  • Comprehensive rotation in arable land.

    • I know that you may have concerns whether we are making it more onerous on farmers to get payments, but we must decipher how we get money into active farmers’ pockets.

    If we go cap in hand with a plan to continue business as usual, how will that be looked at when it comes to acquiring a suitable budget?

    But if we are somewhat ambitious and the EU taxpayer sees something different with farmers wanting to do the right thing, it would hopefully result in a more favourable outcome.

    The objective is to direct the money into the aforementioned areas.

    Some 61,473 people in the last census described themselves as farmers.

    In that same year, there were 123,000 BISS applications

    With reduced budgets.

    Totally ignoring the inflation of the last 30 years, now is the time that money needs to be focused on genuine hard-working farmers with muck under their fingernails.

    We need to move away from a lazily area-based system.

    There is a war on the continent of Europe.

    Can the CAP afford to pay for greenkeepers?