Farmers can now check if new drainage, ploughing and reseeding rules introduced under Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) 2 now apply to their lands through the Department of Agriculture’s Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) scheme application portal.

The Dealer would warn any curious farmers seeking clarity on their lands that the rigmarole of finding this out is not for the technologically faint hearted. Farmers must navigate drop-down menu after drop-down menu on their BISS maps before finally making sure to pick the correct layer to add, which is the ‘>30% Teagasc-EPA indicative soils organic matter (OM) map’.

One farmer took to social media to label the system as the “stuff of nightmare”, while another likened the process to uncovering the third secret of Fatima.