Forestry Payments

yourpics

Why do farmers receive higher rates for planted land than a non-farmer? And a farmer also receives payments for more years, seems very unfair!!

MOSSAD

Because with the farmer the land is usually the sole/main source of his income,so it's just a switching of income. I expect that it ties in with the aim to reach forest cover targets.
Read the requirements re.income requirements to qualify for forestry premia.

yourpics

Cheers Mossad!

But a non-farming landowner could be unemployed and therefore it would be their only source of income!
just a thought!

LostCovey

yourpics wrote: »

Cheers Mossad!

But a non-farming landowner could be unemployed and therefore it would be their only source of income!
just a thought!

THis country does not encourage non-farming landowners in general.

This approach dates back to 1921 when a large number of them were phased out in a major policy shift.

LC

6600

LostCovey wrote: »

THis country does not encourage non-farming landowners in general.

This approach dates back to 1921 when a large number of them were phased out in a major policy shift.

LC

That was the intention of that policy back then but it backfired bigtime by creating many smallholdings that could never be economic. Much of this happened after 1932 when Fianna Fail came to power. Those small holdings inevitably ended up being rented out via the conacre 11 month system and this remains the case up to the present.

Secondly my opinion is that non-farming landowners are actively encouraged in this country. The tax code and agri payments actively promote this.
- Developers being allowed to hoard land banks
- Wealthy people buying land and gifting it to their children. This is a tax free way of transferring wealth to the next generation. There's no requirement for the children to be 'farmers'. This is an intentional loophole and is a large part of the accountancy tax courses because it is used extensively.
- Forestry policy - Encourages 'farmers' to plant land rather than rent or sell to someone that would farm it. You can argue all you want but this policy locks up land from productive farming.
- REPS, DAS, SFP. Supports and persists uneconomic holdings. How many 'farmers' claim these and do little else with their land other than sell a bit of hay off it.

There is no way it could be argued that government policy discourages non-farming landowners. There are more votes to be got by the above policies, simple as.
Young farmer

Rovi

I'm led to believe, and this is only from off-the-record conversations with 'interested' (but very well connected and informed ) parties, that the intention of the big difference between farmer and non-farmer forestry is to make it uneconomic for large corporate bodies (investment companies, pension funds, etc) or very wealthy individuals with no interest whatsoever in trees, timber, sustainable land use, viable family farms and local businesses, to go buying up and afforesting large tracts of land and treating it as a medium-term investment strategy, to be operated on an industrial scale and disposed of or abandoned if the economics turn bad or a better return can be achieved elsewhere.
They (the policy makers) want to encourage a 'continental' style of farm-forestry here, where (relatively) small scale forests are part and parcel of general farming activity, owned, managed, and operated by individuals or families.

If you look at the current Afforestation Scheme, you'll see that the definition of 'Farmer' is quite broad, and it's not terribly difficult for a genuine land-owning applicant to qualify.