organic farming

Can you be in the organic scheme and the new Acres schemes at the same time and if so will there be any clauses and money held?

I can't seem to find any information about the two together, from what I can see now if you can get both then it is a no brainer for a lot of Suckler farmers including myself.

From what I can gather you could get the following payments

Acres (Glas)

BPS/Greening

Organic payment

Suckler Welfare

Beep+s

ANC

For the average 25 hectare farm the Organic payment would be worth €7500 for the 1sr 2 years then €6250 every year after that. Plus the €1400 participation payment.

It all seems too good to be true, I guess the catch is Organic farming itself with it's ability to only carry lower stocking rates plus the whole housing setup for wintering cattle. Also the zero use of chemical fertilizer would be an issue too but at current fertilizer prices it may not be such a bad thing.

This is the new AECM scheme and it's not certain yet if you'll be able to claim both. Well know by September, my advisor is confident it'll be allowed though.

EDIT: Unfortunately the latest is that land based payments under ACRES will NOT be coupled with organics, which is a bit disappointing particularly for organic farmers in the CP areas. Just checked agfood to see if I qualified for the burren region as going by the map it looked like I did, but am in the general stream, which apparently is actually a bit more flexible.

It would. you could just have a non wintering system with organics. I think its the other Ag schemes like Area aid that you need to hold livestock for the 7 months. You can also do no livestock in Organics whereby you just sell the Hay out of the farm but that is subject to keeping the soil nutrition levels up

Who in gods name could decode that shyte... (the agriland article)

I'm not a stupid person generally but that makes 0% sense to me..

How many cows can you house in a standard size pen with 12”6’ slats with cubicles at the back of the slats?

That's just for one of the actions though, payment is so low it's really not even worth doing. Hopefully the other actions available will help things a bit.

Im still not sure of the ins and outs of it, but I like the idea of planting 0.5 ha of trees, comes up to nearly 2k I think. Low emission slurry spreading is probably one for everyone. I'm sure there's a limit on the amount of actions you can take but I haven't the patience at the moment to go through all the dept of AG jargon. Ag Advisor should know more about it now. But the idea of stacking payments is only a very recent addition.

If you just Google search ACRES scheme pdf you'll get the PDF about it.

I just joined organic this year, - if we are going to be penalized like this in Acres for organic membership, it defeats their goal of increasing organic participation.

It's a good course in fairness, very informative.

Is there a link to the organic course you are doing?

Commonage is a bollocks whatever way you look at it. Agree that they should all have been divided long ago.

Half the lads using them not talking anyway which doesn't bode well for any "collaborative" measures.

Basic slag it's very hard to spread filthy stuff. It gives lime effect on land. It's also provides trace elements mainly magnesium and sulphur with a bit of P.

There is some here in this link however I am unsure which are approved here

https://www.fruithillfarm.com/organic-soil-plant-fertilisers/granular-fertilizers.html#:~:text=The%20sources%20of%20the%20main,mineral%20fertilizer%20can%20be%20used.

If who doesn't follow it? Who's payment is lost?

Should I suffer because my neighbour is cnut who doesn't care?

Its not only the payments side of it-

Putting in half the neighbours sheep in your gather and having to call them out first.

Your own sheep coming in with broken or pulled legs after his gather?

Some bollocks driving your sheep away to the bad end of it to keep the good side for his own?

Leaving Ram lambs out on the hill until October so you've a few nice early surprises out of hoggets or similar?

An absolute disaster from start to finish.

Commonage is a bollocks and should be divided by law without exception.

Nitrates derogations wouldn't affect too many of us with commonage i think.

This co-operation thing is a joke and rules quite a few of us including me out of Acres at all.

His argument is rather blunt - shure there are problems in relation to approaches to livestock management in pasture settings(more so actually in Western Countries were tolerance of wildlife sharing farmland is often rather low regrettably). But I've seen myself first hand having visited the likes of Turkey and Kenya how extensive livestock rearing can work in harmony with nature, right up to the top of the food chain.

Taking longer to raise means less animals over a given time

The fool (or bad actor) is promoting intensification....

Put them all in a shed = more animals and more land area dedicated to growing feed then + lower prices

Wouldn't surprise me if guys like this we're getting industry funding....

Huxley seems to have been more correct than Orwell.