“Radical action is needed” to keep farmers in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association (INHFA) has said.

INHFA president Vincent Roddy made the comments when calling for roundtable discussions with all stakeholders to fix the ongoing ACRES issues.

“Many farmers, especially in ACRES co-operation, have become totally disillusioned with the scheme,” he said.

Roddy highlighted that a roundtable forum - including the Department of Agriculture, all co-operation teams, the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA), Teagasc and farmer representative bodies such as the INHFA - as the only way to address ACRES problems.

“We are now calling on the Minister [for Agriculture] to establish this forum at the earliest possible opportunity, but ideally by the end of October.

“Through such a forum, we are willing, with the other stakeholders, to work in finding solutions; whether that takes a day, a week, a month or longer.

“We must recognise the need for radical action and understand that farmers won’t stay in the scheme if it doesn’t make financial sense and unfortunately for too many farmers that is the current situation.

“The environmental ambition detailed in ACRES will never be achieved if we don’t do right by our farmers, which seems to be a point that some have lost sight of,” he added.

Issues

Roddy outlined the issues farmers have said they face in ACRES as:

  • Delays in finalising balancing payments to farmers.
  • Demands to repay monies when farmers weren’t given the opportunity to offset possible overpayments through actions such as non-productive investments (NPIs).
  • Delays in providing farmers with critical information relating to habitat scores.
  • The re-scoring of some commonages where farmers were not informed of the previous score and possible issues that led to a low habitat score. This has deprived farmers of being able to take action to improve their scores and tied them into a low score and payment for the coming year.
  • Concerns around the habitat scores and a lack of understanding and engagement around how these scores were established.
  • No obvious mechanism for a speedy independent appeal for farmers who are unhappy with their habitat scores.
  • The inability to carry out actions applied for under the NPIs because the Department of Agriculture hasn’t given approval for these actions.
  • The hold-up in sanctioning landscape actions (LAs) which will be a critical element to assist commonage farmers in improving their habitat score and overall payments.
  • For organic farmers and those who were previously part of European Innovation Partnerships (EIP), the ACRES payment model has significantly reduced their income.
  • On the launch of ACRES, farmers were sold a payment model based on a habitat score of eight that has since proven to be inaccurate.

    • The INHFA president added that “there are other issues that individual farmers have detailed to us that are also critical and must be addressed if we are going to improve the scheme”.