REPS 4 must have greener focus

REPS4 — the next Rural Environment Protection Scheme — must provide sufficient returns to support landowners to continue farming high value nature areas.

But it must also give sufficient incentives to encourage farmers in the more commercial and productive areas to encompass environmental projects in their management practices.

Those are the views of Eugene Ryan, Head of REPS in Teagasc, who said that REPS 4 must address the challenge of being relevant to farming in both low output, high nature areas and also high output commercial farming areas. He welcomed the proposed opening up of the scheme to more commercial type farmers, with those farms where the organic nitrogen levels are over 170kgs per hectare being likely to qualify.