Stephen Cadogan: No TAMS grant aid for grain equipment is glaring omission
Following the SWOT analysis and the development programme consultation process, grant aid was proposed to the EU Commission for capital investment by young farmers and organic farmers, and for dairy equipment, low emission slurry spreading machinery, animal welfare, safety, nutrient storage and pig and poultry farms.
As a result, grants are being made available for a wide range of equipment under these headings, including animal housing, roofing of yards, automatic slurry scrapers, manure pits, concrete tanks, slurry stores, isolation boxes, calving pens, bull pens, cattle crushes and enclosures, cattle and sheep handling equipment, cattle weighing scales, slurry safety equipment, farmyard safety equipment, a wide range of dairy structures, slurry tankers, solar panels for pig and poultry buildings, etc.
But there’s a glaring omission from the list. There’s no grant aid on offer for on-farm storage handling and drying or processing facilities for grain, for modern low drift sprayer technology, nor for soil fertility and yield mapping technology using GPS and GIS for precision farming.
Tillage farmers have reacted vociferously to the lack of grants for grain storage or drying, also pointing out the absence of biomass driers, specialist equipment and facilities for storage of and spreading of organic manures, or water harvesting equipment and associated storage, on the list for TAMS (Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Schemes).
It’s a slap in the face for the tillage sector, because nearly every tonne of grain harvested in Ireland needs drying — and not even a €50,000 mobile grain drier will be grant aided.
So tillage farmers won’t get grants of up to 40% for the equipment they need most. And to add insult to injury, their sons who are taking over the farm can’t avail of 60% grants in the Young Farmer Capital Investment Scheme section of TAMS.
Tillage is a sector which makes a key contribution to the agri-food industry, said Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney recently.
He referred to the importance of sustaining 2.2 million tonnes per annum of Irish grain, in order to avoid over-dependence on imported cereals to feed our growing livestock herds. The sector has potential for expansion due to the growth of Ireland’s whiskey industry and gluten-free oats exporting.
But equipment for grain will be grant aided only for organic tillage farmers.
There is now a danger that tillage farmers — like many others — could fall between the cracks among the proliferation of schemes which determine your standing in Irish farming. Perhaps the worst affected are those with small single farm payments (now basic payments), which left them among the “have-nots” of Irish farming since 2005.
The last thing needed is another new scheme which leaves one sector weakened in competitive terms. But that is what has happened, because tillage farmers can only expand by taking leased or conacre land, and it will be harder than ever for them to outbid dairy farmers in the land market — and at the same time buy essential equipment without grant aid.
Meanwhile, the dairy farmer can even buy a robotic milking machine and avail of a 40 or 60% grant.
Perhaps the government believes that tillage farmers are already adequately equipped. It has certainly been indicated, for example, that there is considered to be adequate overall storage capacity within the Irish potato industry, and that grant-aid for potato storage and ventilation system is not needed — except for organic farmers.
However, there are new investment needs in the tillage sector, as in every sector — such as complying with the demands of the EU’s new Sustainable Use Directive for pesticide users; adopting sustainable precision farming methods; planting hedgerows to comply with new EFA “greening” regulations; and upgrading road trailers to new RSA standards — as well as replacing obsolete grain drying and storage facilities.
