Farm Payments 2024

so the people in the east worked and borrowed to stock high, what did other lads do wrong?

What if things had been done the other way around and less intensive lads on bad land got the good payments 20 years ago and they changed now to distribute payments more evenly, would you say it was unfair and hand back the money? Maybe if it had been done that way then lads could have afforded to work, reclaim, drain and what ever else was needed to be done to make their land more productive and they wouldn’t need to be looking at more or less destocking their land to go organic to try and make some sort of money.

You had over 20 years of what more than triple the average entitlement value on good productive land? Do you not think it’s time that another lad, maybe a young lad or girl starting out, had the opportunity to have a middling payment so they might be able to make something of their land?

TBH kk, there was serious winners and loser after the 2002 removal of the link between production and payments. A lot of farmers stacked payments so they didn't have to rent land.

The losers were the suckler farmer West of the Shannon who found there bull weanling dropped 2-300 euro in value after the link disappeared in 2005. These lads sold there bull weanlings with no punches taken. I know of a calf rearer who used to buy and rear a couple hundred bull calves in North Kerry. He was after buying a farm around 2000 and had not the cash flow to punch cattle and replace them so he sold all his bulls as yearlings with all punches and extensivation payments intact.

Lads that bought land during 2003/4 where sellers loaded the payments onto there own. Lads with high payments had 20 years of it. It was always going to end. The EU was reducing the CAP budget by about 1% a year over that time scale, and redirected payments towards greening. Problem was the farm organisations did not acknowledge this to the farmers with the higher payments.

Another thing that happened to lads along the west coast was the way the removing of so call ineligible areas such as rivers, rock and scrub. Thebm land had not changed since 2002 but the often these farmers lost 10%+ of there payment and now have to buy back entitlements to activate these lands as they are included again. They got virtually nothing for there entitlements often as they were low value.

A significant number of lads around the rings in marts would only be there because they had an average industrial wage in payments for the first 10+ years. They could then act the bollax and prevent part time lads from buying and force them to buy there replacements from them. LSL finally f@@ked that game although lads still manage to pick up a few here and there.

When I bought the farm in 2002 I ended up with about 10.5k in payments. In 2009 ( I think) I bought about 1.5k in low value entitlements for there face value and stacked them onto my own payment. It's has dropped to below 8k now and stabilised there. In During 2003/4 I drew on average about 20k/ year in punches, if I had one reference year I have been made but that was the way the cookie crumbled. I got f@@ked over in 2010 because REPS closed and had no environmental scheme for 6 years. There was many lads caught similar to me when during 2007/8 the department started to make REPS available and attractive to extremely intensive farmers.

There was f@@k all fair about what happens when SFP was first set up it just happened that some were lucky to fall off the right side of the stool. If you did you had 20 years of it if lads left there business stand still and got addicted to the high payment tit it unfortunate, blame the farm organisations for not highlighting what was going to happen instead of them harping on about "upward only convergence" when they knew full well what was going to happen

THanks for that @V6400 , I'll take a look.

Ya lads with heifers lost out as there was only the slaughter premiumon them. At least with cull cows you could have two twists a year at the slaughter premium.

Heard of a lad that was slaughtering 900 a year of them mostly on rented land. He dropped all the rented land and instead of having 400 euro entitlements they were around 2k in value. He was in his late 50's and it provided him some retirement income as he had no successor.

I can understand some lads who had high entitlements being upset/annoyed however they should have realised it was going to change. I do not buy the productive/ non productive arguments. It was just the way things fell at the time.

Many lads forget for 5 years before 2002 the national envelope was capped so lads producing more would have reduced the payment on individual animal premia. As I said it depended on where your farming business was at the time

If you signed a contract for land on the 31 December 2002 you get the DED average if you signed on the 1 January you got 50% of the DED average.

Maybe some lads on lower value entitlements could have made more of an effort to up the value of there's however it was all relative with a lot of lad left naked or virtually naked of entitlements

I

Not correct, the money was made in punching cattle. The difference between the value of the punch on an animal with and without it was about 60% of the value of the punch and you had the extensivation on them as well.

I bought animal in 2003/4 with about 450 in punchs, extensivation and slaughter premia on them for about 250 more than punched out animals, you just had to wait for the punches and extensivation. Slaughter premium was paid out in regular tranches throughout the year. Premia was paid at the end of the year on a calender year basis. Any animal punched before December 31st was paid early the following year. Extensivation was tricky one it was on a selected date basis, 5 of them throughout the year on dates that the minister selected. It was paid around May the following year great thing about it, was it was in the one walloper of a cheque

If farmer were trading at a loss they were making mistakes. Your factory payment was only a small portion of the overall pot.

Well said, the attitudes shown here sometimes are ridiculous. I'm delighted "their money" is being distributed more fairly and evenly.

Yeah I haven’t received any Eco payment yet

Stocking rate goes on what you put on your census. I didn't get eco last year until end of January 2024

I haven't received anything yet.

Is this strange or am I just at the back of the que?

Should I be calling Portlaoise?

Ring straight away is my advice

Compared to last year

Sheep welfare in but not full payment- about the same as last year.

I got full payment in SWS.

Had an inspection last week on SIS so hopefully it'll be through soon enough.

She didn't say when payment would be made, but found her very helpful with the inspection.

Re.. tags in ear. Some of my sheep had only one tag (only a few) she never mentioned it during inspection.

Father had an inspection before and I remember one of the actions was to re-tag sheep with only 1 tag, then send in a photo of register showing this action done

All depends how awkward the inspector is it seems

Correct. Spotted this today. This is the €8 new money.