Farmers fear blight on landscape in wake of major SFP reductions
THE signal from Europe could not be clearer. Bio-diverse landscapes need to be eliminated, or you will suffer savage multi-annual cuts to your single payment.
So said Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association national president Gabriel Gilmartin, as farmers nationwide react to heavy-handed Government enforcement of land eligibility reductions in the single farm payment (SFP) system which transfers about €1.2bn per year of EU money to Irish farmers.
Farmers are required to exclude from their annual payment application all ineligible features, such as buildings, farmyards, scrub, roadways, forests, and lakes. Any payments made to farmers in respect of areas, found to be ineligible must be reimbursed. But farmer anger has flared up after a flood of bills over the past year.
Landowners received the letters in the post out of the blue, often with very large bills included. It has come as a huge shock to many to receive large fines accompanied by the threat of further financial penalties, but with no clear explanation as to how the figures are arrived at — and in some cases, the assessments were clearly arrived at through bureaucratic errors.
Farmers are also baffled by what they see as a perverse logic that seems to contravene EU and Irish environmental policy.
At a public meeting in Bantry, Co Cork in mid-January, farmer anger was clear, especially at the heavy-handed manner of the eligible land clampdown.
One young farmer described receiving a letter with accompanying fine and map, on which there was a non-existent river that supposedly took up an acre of the land he had claimed payment for.
In some cases, the shadow cast by mature oak trees (which showed up on satellite maps) has ruled land as ineligible for agriculture.
Nationwide, farmers are being fined up to €10,000 for claiming payments for ineligible land. According to Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney, 400 farmers who over-claimed by more than 20% did not receive any single farm payment last year, because of the size of the fine. But the average over-claiming farmer would have to pay only about €400.
Fianna Fáil Senator Denis O’Donovan, who attended the public meeting in Bantry, has told Seanad Éireann that there is a perception that ineligible land fines are more prevalent in west Cork and south Kerry.
“It is not just one or two here and there; it seems to be widespread.”
Farmers got no prior notice. “If there had been a yellow card or a warning, they might have been able to do something.”
“What concerned me at this meeting was the number of farmers who said that when the burning season is open in March — I would not agree with this — they are going to burn all the bushes and natural flora to ensure that if the man in Mars photographs them again the place will be green rather than be covered.”
Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) president Gabriel Gilmartin said, “The red-lining of land parcels which deems areas ineligible with any level of scrub, trees or other imperfections is driving farmers into a corner.
“Farmers feel the only solution will be to bulldoze, burn or remove any tree, bush, gorse or other species.”
“The people who are being hit by these cuts are the severely disadvantaged farmers,” said Senator O’Donovan (who promised at the Bantry meeting to join in solidarity with any eventual protest march on the Dáil).
“Somebody with 70 or 80 acres of good land who is an intensive dairy farmer will not be affected at all. The people who suffer are the guys in the peninsulas and in places like Dunmanway and parts of west Cork who have a lot of cropping rock, natural bushes and firs growing, which we should be trying to preserve anyway as much as we can.”
He said one man who lost over €6,000 said he had half the money committed to paying back the credit union, from which he borrowed last year due to a very harsh spring which lasted almost until June.
At Bantry, Dermot Kelleher of ICSA expressed dismay at the direction of EU policy, questioning why after 30 years of talking about REPS and maintaining biodiversity, there is suddenly pressure on to turn all trees, scrubland and gorse into level green fields.
“Now we’ll be burning the habitats for the birds,” he suggested, and extracted a few laughs from the Bantry attendance by suggesting that those who were chopping and changing land policy in the EU “know as much about farming as I know about flying a helicopter.”
