Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue recently announced payments worth €46.59m to 15,364 farmers participating in the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP).

There have been some queries over the last week relating to the make-up of payments, with many farmers querying a SCEP overpayment listed on the agfood.ie payments portal.

This relates to the cost of genotyping. Herds are required to genotype 70% of their reference number – for example, a herd with a reference number of 30 females is required to genotype 21 animals annually.

Genomic sampling costs €20 per animal, so in this example, it costs €420 or in the region of 9% to 10% of the herd’s payment of approximately €4,275.

The SCEP payment is split in to six components, with 20% based on each of the four actions – eligible AI/bull, female replacement strategy, genotyping and weight recording while there is 10% for each record-keeping and event-recording.

Where payment has been withheld under any of these actions, it will be listed on the remittance when accessed through the ‘Financial Self-Services’ on agfood.ie.

Record-keeping

A common action where full or partial payment is withheld is for the actions record-keeping and event-recording.

For full payment under this action, all survey data must have been recorded by the end of November.

Where between 80% and 100% of the required data is submitted, then a proportionate reduction based on the percentage of data submitted will have been applied.

If less than 80% of data was submitted, then the full payment for this action will have been withheld, plus a 10% penalty will have been applied.

This is calculated on the sum of money attributed to the action and it is important to note that it will be reimbursed if the required data is submitted by 15 February 2024.

Replacement target

Another common example of funds being withheld for a specific action and a penalty being imposed is under the female replacement target action.

A small cohort of farmers have not satisfied the 50% replacement target, but have until 22 January 2024 to do so, due to results of genotyping not being returned by 31 October 2023.

Affected farmers can also opt to accept the penalty for year one and work towards complying in future years.

Bord Bia certification

With 17,610 farmers in SCEP, there are still over 2,200 participants to receive payment.

It is worth highlighting that farmers awaiting Bord Bia certification will not receive payment until this is satisfied.

The deadline for farmers who applied to the Sustainable Beef and Lamb Assurance Scheme by 16 October 2023, but who have yet to receive certification, is 22 January 2024.

Farmers who fail to receive certification by this date will be removed from the scheme.