What you can purchase under TAMS III on tillage farms

TAMS III will open for applications soon and everyone has a clean slate when it comes to a budget.

TAMS gives farmers the chance to invest on their farm while availing of a 40% grant in that investment.

That budget has also increased, so each farm has €90,000 to spend over five years if they wish. In partnerships, the total spend remains at €160,000.

Young farmers, women farmers and organic farmers can all avail of a 60% grant instead of a 40% grant. Applications for the first tranche are due by 16 June.

There are plenty of new additions to the Tillage Capital Investment Scheme (TCIS) list (Table 1), many focused on potato farming. However, other additions include machinery to aid with the trade of fodder, like a bag filler and weighbridges.

The reference costs, which are the estimated costs of these investments by the Department of Agriculture, are included in Table 1. Scroll to the end of the article to view.

The far right column shows the reference cost for the item, so if you are building a grain store you multiply that figure by the size of the store in m2.

If you are buying a GPS control unit then that is a single unit, so there is just one figure to deal with.

When buying machinery, you need to work off an equation using two reference costs (the multiplier and the unit price). For example, if buying a drill, you need to take the width of the seed drill. Let’s say it is a strip till drill and is 3m in width. Using the figures from Table 1, we can calculate the reference cost of the seed drill.

Reference cost of the seed drill = (18,427.90 x 3) + 16,183 = 71,466.70.

If the drill costs less than the reference cost, they will receive 40% of that price back.

So, if someone is buying a 3m, strip-till drill they can get a 40% grant on the reference cost above, meaning that they would receive a maximum of €28,586.68 back on that investment.

If the drill costs less than the reference cost, they will receive 40% of that price back. If the drill costs more than the reference cost, then €28,586.68 is the maximum amount of money they can get back.

That farmer will then have €61,413.32 of the €90,000 allowance left to make further investments if they wish to.

The majority of items on the list have increased. Cambridge rollers with and without paddles and a furrow press have remained at the same reference cost that was released on 9 April 2022, while one item has decreased in price.

The reference cost for a 3m direct drill in TAMS II was €60,224.70, while in TAMS III that direct drill is now €48,179.70.

There is also a farm safety section under TAMS III and farmers should consider items under that scheme as well, such as wheel changing equipment, sliding doors and lighting to make your farmyard that bit safer.

Farmers can also get a 60% grant under the Solar Capital Investment Scheme, which may be an option on roof space.

As the Government is now set with a target to increase tillage area under the Climate Action Plan, it appears they have missed an opportunity in the new TAMS.

If the tillage area is to increase, it is most likely to come in small areas, on farms which do not have large amounts of tillage.

These farms will still need a large share of equipment to get work done efficiently and at the right time.

However, they do not need or want to make massive financial investments. For example, they do not need a fertiliser spreader that will cost €50,000 or a sprayer that will cost €80,000.

Mounted sprayers with electronic control have been removed from the TAMS list, for example.

Farmers entering into tillage could do with a grain trailer and concrete to tip grain on, but these have also been left out.

Tillage farmers are now facing more rules under nitrates and losing land to dairy farmers due to nitrates.

If basic GPS guidance units were available through TAMS, it could save on fertiliser across the country and improve water quality, particularly on grassland as there are no tramlines.