The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is being urged to rethink their method of grant delivery and support money to agriculture businesses in Northern Ireland.
Farmers for Action (FFA) has claimed that amending the ‘Attitude to Investment Survey’ would enable farmers to “invest in new capital equipment and infrastructure”.
Members of the FFA Steering Committee claim they have identified problems in the survey, such as a decline in support money and farm income – which the group said diminishes the interest from farmers.
FFA also suggests targeted grant support, rather than support for active farmers willing to participate.
A spokesperson for the steering committee said: “Ever-increasing average age of farmers, now almost 60, many of whom are top of their game, yet being discriminated by grant support not being freely available to them without age and qualification conditions.”
According to FFA, the steering committee reported an increasing number of “farmers saying they can’t justify the hassle of the time required to qualify for support”.
The steering committee also stated that many farmers across NI “with few exceptions, have been working for quite a number of years below the cost of production”.
“This has continued, due to cutting corners on safety (thus agriculture being the most unsafe industry across these islands), using free family labour, old and young.
“However, rampant inflation since Covid-19 and the Ukranian war starting, has now meant that even this formula up to now, to allow Northern Ireland’s family farmers to stay on the land, is failing drastically by the day.”
Support from DAERA
FFA NI coordinator, William Taylor said: “Clearly, recent methods of delivery are not working for a numbers of reasons, which have been demonstrated by increasingly low participation in support schemes in recent years.”
Taylor added: “The dogs in the street know that agricultural and horticultural subsidies for working farms are changing and diminishing in value by the day.”
FFA is calling for “equal opportunity grant support and the Northern Ireland Farm Welfare Bill”.
