Last autumn it became clear that unionist members of the Stormont Agriculture committee were not fully on board with an initial proposal from DAERA to make participation in a new Bovine Genetics Project (BGP) a condition to receive future farm payments.

In the end, officials had to offer a compromise whereby cattle farmers will have to register for the project and do associated training, but they don’t actually have to genotype (DNA sample) their breeding cattle.

If that compromise hadn’t been offered, there was a real prospect that the committee could have blocked the entire project.

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The core argument made related to wider concerns that DAERA are attaching too many conditions to payments.

There is already the need to sign up and complete training in the soil nutrient health scheme by May 2027. The BGP will follow in 2028, with carbon benchmarking on the cards for 2029. In the case of the BGP, there was also an underlying issue that it only applies to cattle farmers.

While the concerns expressed by MLAs are valid, it has created an imperfect situation, where farmers will have to sit through training, but don’t actually have to do the important part, which is to DNA-sample their cattle.

The core argument made related to wider concerns that DAERA are attaching too many conditions to payments

It is also important to point out this is an industry-led initiative, run by a not-for-profit company in the form of Sustainable Ruminant Genetics (SRG), which has managed to secure over £16m of government money to genotype the entire NI cattle breeding herd.

It is not something being imposed on farmers by government, food processors or retailers. Instead, it has the potential to create a fantastic database of information, which ultimately will lead to a more profitable and efficient dairy and suckler herd.

But all that is very dependent on most farmers genotyping their herds. By allowing that process to be voluntary, it gives people the option to leave it to someone else to do.

The success of the bovine genetics project was put in jeopardy last autumn – on this occasion, it was the wrong call by our politicians.