Farmers have opportunity to design farm scheme to support family farms – Naughten

In Agriculture, News by Denis Naughten

Denis Naughten TD has welcomed the inclusion of a provision in Budget 2020 to pilot new agricultural schemes which has the potential to provide income support to cattle and sheep farmers.

“Up to now environmental schemes have been designed by everyone except farmers. However, with the new €3m fund to pilot new agri-environmental schemes farmers can design a scheme along the lines of the Smart Farming scheme which has saved livestock farmers on average €6,300 while reducing carbon emissions by 9%. This is a proposal which I put forward before the summer and I now hope that we can use this to ensure that we can access further funds through the forthcoming CAP reforms,” said Denis Naughten.

“Instead of schemes being designed by environmentalists for farmers to jump through hoops, farmers now have the opportunity to design a sector specific environmental scheme which puts profitability and sustainability of the suckler and sheep industries at its core.

“Such a scheme needs to be about putting cash back into farmers’ pockets by acknowledging what they are doing every day to support the protection of our countryside, not to create conditions designed to penalise farmers.

“I would strongly encourage farmers to come together to design schemes that support the good practice they are doing on a daily basis on farms and that can support diversification into renewable energy, rather than leaving it up to the environmental lobby to design obstacles for farmers,” concluded Denis Naughten.

ENDS.

See more at https://smartfarming.ie/