My €100m BEAM scheme

It seems a large minority of farmers are going to be giving it back. What a silly scheme!

It shows up on financial services when paid back

And a lot of silly farmers, refused to obey simple rules yet expected to get paid. And a sillier TD Matt Carthy wanting Minister to find some way of letting these farmers keep the money. Imagine him being Minister for Ag in the next government. We will make the rules but if ye don't obey them no problem you will still get paid

Isn't that largely the way it always goes though with every Minister for Ag. for all our lives?

What everybody forgets is the rules were imposed by the EU at the time not the Dept or the minister. They did the same for the milk support 4-5 years back. I agree that year was a cluster f@@k and like any scheme there is winners and losers. However it's up to individuals to decide if the support is worth taking and if you do decide it is worth it then you follow the rules. Many lads killed cattle early that year due to the summer that was in it but received little or no support as the cattle they slaughered were outside the support window.

I agree entirely about Brexit, the processor's a sed it as a stick to beat us with. As I explained many times here even if the British opt to port beef from elsewhere this beef need to be replaced in that market.

It interesting that even though Australia is at present virtually banned from the Chinese market it is not effecting the Australian be g price

I received a letter today about this, informing me that I have passed the threshold of my 5% reduced limit since the end of October and it is now impossible for me to comply with the scheme. I now owe them all of the monies received and if I don't pay within 31 days from when they write with details of how to pay, they will charge 3% interest per year on the money and then recoup the capital and interest from future payments.

Anybody else get one of these?

I see Jackie Cahill Fianna Fáil TD saying that farmers didn't understand the rules of the scheme.I believe if you don't understand something you ask someone who does .The vast majority would have an advisor .

There are a number of elderly (mostly single men) suckler farmers in my area. There are probably a handful that applied for the BEAM scheme for one, two or at the most three suckler cull cows that they sent to the factory. I don't know how they applied but I'm fairly sure they didn't do it themselves on Agfood as most of them have simple mobile phones so I presume their Ag consultant applied.

I reckon the monies will be recouped in the future from their SFP/BPS/GLAS/BDGP payments etc

We sent an email to beam section last week to withdraw from the scheme as we also viewed it as an interest free loan as we were trying to increase stock numbers as opposed to decrease. We followed up the email with a phone call & posted in the cheque which was cashed yesterday.

Just wanted it sorted in this year’s accounts instead of next years as cattle prices were better.

God only knows what next year will bring!

Smart thinking

Are you “an advisor”??

Yes very interesting to see the furore over pig prices Agree completely that the smaller producer was wiped out. The huge profits of previous years was not mentioned. IFA president has a pot of e7million built up.Profits of from half to one million per year for the last number of years and continuing to expand. This is the trend with these big units, and expect someone else to sell their product and return them a profit.