9,000 farmers need help

ARE Irish farmers coping better with their paper work? It is not that long ago since farm organisations were highlighting example after example of farmers falling foul of the huge amount of form-filling needed to qualify for €3 billion per year of Brussels payments.

Maybe now farmers are pre-occupied with bigger problems, such as decoupling and the nitrates directive.

Or, maybe they have become more efficient at their office work, after 12 years of premiums.

But that is certainly not the case for the 9,000 farmers who will get no aid from Brussels for at least the next 10 years, unless they send in Area Aid forms to the Department of Agriculture without delay.

It’s the first time these farmers have been required to do so, and they are not coping very well with this new demand on their administration skills.

It’s not all roses either for the 1,143 farmers who made submissions in 2003 to the Agriculture Appeals Office because they were unhappy with decisions made in the Department on entitlements under certain EU schemes.

Mind you, the Department points out that 1,143 is only a drop in the ocean when compared to the 600,000 applications made to these schemes last year.

The Department’s would also say that farmers’ bureaucratic headaches should recede when decoupling begins next January and they will have just one Single Farm Payment per year to worry about.

But getting that payment may be not be as simple as farmers think, as Michael Dowling warns in Preparing for New Challenges, an IFA organisational review document.

He points out that the payments may be subject to 18 cross-compliance measures.

These reflect the increasingly complex demands being made on farmers under headings of food safety and traceability, environment, public and animal health and welfare, he says.

No-one will be too surprised if in 10 years’ time, Irish farmers face just as bewildering an array of bureaucracy as they did 12 years ago, when the premium system started.

Maybe the farmer organisations should try harder to cushion their members from the blizzards of paper which go hand-in-hand with EU management of farmers’ affairs.

They could apply an idea common in other member states where farm bodies offer a hand-holding service for those who cannot cope with the EU’s Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS).

In most member states, farmers’ co-operatives or organisations help their members to maximise their entitlements under EU schemes.

This is a great perk for members who cannot afford to hire their own consultants, as large-scale farmers do.

In the Austrian system, for example, it is compulsory for farmers to belong to a farmers’ union, which has a very clear role in helping members get their entitlements.

Farming organisations here seem too ready to pass the buck on to the Department of Agriculture, insisting that the Department make EU scheme paperwork more accessible.

Although Ireland’s forms and guidance notes are reckoned to be the best designed in the EU - from the farmer’s viewpoint - the IFA and ICMSA could consider how they might help their members in the future, if decoupling ushers in, as predicted, a whole new raft of bureaucratic demands.

Right now, there are 9,000 farmers who would be forever indebted to any organisation which could help them through their first big run-in with EU-generated paper work.