The Food Vision tillage group was told by Department of Agriculture officials at its meeting on 7 February that no new tillage scheme will be open for the current season, the Irish Farmers Journal understands.The €100/ha payment due to be paid in the coming weeks was announced last April by then-Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue.
The Food Vision tillage group was told by Department of Agriculture officials at its meeting on 7 February that no new tillage scheme will be open for the current season, the Irish Farmers Journal understands.
The €100/ha payment due to be paid in the coming weeks was announced last April by then-Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue.
Reports from the meeting were that the Department of Agriculture noted that the €100/ha payment, announced to help farmers in a difficult season, is now part of the 2025 budget and no other new funding will be available to tillage until the 2026 budget.
Funding in the 2026 budget would, of course, need to be applied and lobbied for and is not guaranteed.
Report
The Food Vision tillage group was mooted in March 2023 and met in May 2023 for the first time. The final report was published on 14 May 2024.
The report outlined 28 actions to support and improve the tillage sector and seven of these were labelled priority actions.
These included the introduction of a tillage expansion and sustainability scheme, an immediate financial support package for the 2024 growing season, examining existing supports for tillage farmers, developing industry-led initiatives to support the sector’s sustainability, facilitating and encouraging the exchange of organic manures between farms, driving the preferential use of Irish grain and protein in animal feed and ensuring the sustainable use of wastewater on agricultural land.
While many of these actions are being worked on in the background, no funding has been provided to implement the actions in the report.
In the meantime, tillage area is declining. It went from approximately 348,820ha in 2022 to 346,703ha in 2023 and down to 343,760ha in 2024.
The Government is currently failing in its target to increase the tillage area to 400,000ha by 2030.
Reaction
Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) grain chair Kieran McEvoy told the Irish Farmers Journal that there will “have to be a payment for crop 2025”.
He said: “We need financial assistance and a long-term plan for tillage from the Minister [Martin Hayden].”
McEvoy believes this support will come from what he saw in the Programme for Government on tillage.
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