The NI Executive’s recent decision to ringfence the existing farm support budget does not cover any future increases to agricultural funding, Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir has said.

The issue stems from the UK government’s announcement in October 2024 that funding for agriculture will be added in to each region’s overall block grant, rather than ringfenced specifically for farm schemes.

While the NI Executive has agreed to continue to earmark the existing £332.5m farm budget for NI agriculture, if any additional farm funding were to be allocated from the UK government, it could ultimately be given to any government department in NI.

“I will continue to make the case to the Executive in future public expenditure exercises to maximise the funding for my department in these areas,” Minister Muir said.

Divided out

In correspondence with the Irish Farmers Journal, the Alliance MLA explained that another issue with the new arrangement surrounds how new farm money is divided out across UK regions.

Any future increase in funding will be allocated by a mechanism which is based around the population of each devolved region, known as the Barnett Formula.

In the past, NI received around 9% of the UK’s total agricultural budget, but the Barnett Formula means NI is now only entitled to around 3% of any additional funding.

Minister Muir said for every extra £10m that is made available for UK farming, only £300,000 will go to NI under Barnett. Before now, NI would have been entitled to an additional £900,000.

“Although we have a population of nearly 2m, NI produces enough food protein for 10m adults and a large proportion is supplied to other parts of the UK,” Minister Muir said.

“The agri-food sector is also a much larger proportion of the NI economy than in other parts of the UK,” he added.