Farmers will not be required to meet carbon footprint targets to be eligible for payments in future years, a senior farm adviser within DAERA has said.
Speaking to farmers in Coleraine, Michael Calvert explained that it will be a condition to conduct carbon footprinting to claim the new Farm Sustainability Payment from 2026.
However, questions came from the floor about whether the conditions will get stricter in the future, with farmers eventually required to meet certain targets to cut their emissions.
“There are no targets. The legislation in the Climate Change Act requires DAERA to bring forward proposals to fund carbon footprinting,” Calvert responded.
“The farmer will own the data. It will be the farmer’s data. There will be very strict controls based on how that information can be used,” he added.
Productivity
The CAFRE adviser said the “real benefit” of carbon footprinting was for farmers to assess the productivity of their business and this should help improve financial performance too.
“We see quite a lot of correlation between a good carbon footprint and efficiency,” he said.
During his presentation, Calvert outlined the main changes to farm payments over the coming years.
The former Basic Payment Scheme is being replaced with the Farm Sustainability Transition Payment in 2025, although in practice there is little change to scheme rules.
“It is really just a renaming of the payment system that is already in place,” Calvert said.
Rollout
From 2026, the new Farm Sustainability Payment will be rolled out in full, with three key conditions attached for farmers to be eligible for payment.
These are adhering to new Farm Sustainability Standards, which effectively replace existing Cross Compliance rules, participating in the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme and conducting carbon footprinting.
However, roll out of carbon footprinting has been slow to get started and it will initially be aimed at participants in the Farm Quality Assurance Scheme.
“Conditionality will be phased in. It will only apply to you once you have had the opportunity to comply,” Calvert said.
Land eligibility rules are also set to change in 2026, with all land except hard features, such as laneways and farmyards, eligible for the Farm Sustainability Payment.
Around 2,000 landowners who had no livestock or crops in 2020 and 2021 will not be able to claim the payment from next year and progressive capping on payments over £60,000 is also to be introduced.
Support assistants will no longer be available to help NI farmers collect information for physical and financial benchmarking.
At Stormont last week, Albert Johnston from CAFRE outlined the new farm discussion group scheme which will be known as Business Sustainability Groups.
Scheme participants will receive £445 per year, with an additional £786 also available for hosting a meeting.
Benchmarking
Johnston said that similar to the previous Business Development Group scheme, participants will be expected to complete physical and financial benchmarking.
“In our previous programme, DAERA funded data collectors to go out on farms to collect that data and support the farmers, but as part of this programme we are giving the farmer the responsibility,” he said.
Johnston told MLAs that farmers would have the option to use the money from participating in the scheme to “bring in expertise” to help them collate data for benchmarking.
“The £445 is there to support that farmer in the collection, analysis and presentation of that data, and also for attending the meetings to share that [information],” he said.