Macra news: Logic in greening consultation urged
This is according to Macra national president Seán Finan, who said that the consultative process on greening measures by the EU Commission must take account of the experience of farmers and the reality of farming structures.
Mr Finan was speaking after a meeting of European young farmers in Cologne, Germany, last week, and as a 12-week consultation process on greening measures by the EU Commission was due to close for public submissions.
Mr Finan welcomed the opportunity for consultation and said a one-size-fits-all approach in terms of the implementation of greening measures in the tillage sector across the three-crop rule and Ecological Focus Areas does not adequately reflect the reality of farming, such as variations in land type and farming arrangements.
Young Cork tillage farmer Martin O’Regan, who also attended the conference said: “Introducing the option of developing a good crop rotation plan that is specific to farms would be far more effective in many circumstances than a rigid three-crop rule.”
He said collaborative-type tillage arrangements such as share farming are particularly affected by what he termed “burdensome greening bureaucracy”.
“A whole farming approach for the active farmer in collective farming arrangements would be far more effective from an environmental perspective,” he said.
“ Farmers with a number of farming arrangements to grow crops have to travel distances to till, sow, apply crop protection and nutrients and harvest three different crops at different times for each farming arrangement which is impractical, inefficient, and is not necessarily achieving its greening objective,” Mr O’Regan added.
