Stephen Cadogan: Beef Data and Genomics Programme offers €52m per year carrot to save suckler farms

The Beef Data and Genomics Programme may have come just in time to rescue suckler farming!

There has been a lot of negative farmer reaction to the launch of the BDGP scheme, much of it centred on the requirement that participants have to commit to a six-year contract, on pain of having payments clawed back if they don’t comply with scheme requirements for six years.

One could interpret that reaction as a sign that many farmers had intended to give up suckler farming in the next six years.