The Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) will make a submission to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) for funding to recruit two nitrates specialists.
The appointments would assist in tailoring information for members to derogation farmers and would be introduced to deal with nitrates regulations and derogations, the ACA said.
The ACA criticised that, despite dealing with a “significant” number of farmers, it is not involved in nationally funded programmes on water quality advisory services.
Regulations need to be given time to improve water quality, however, management practices also need to be changed, ACA National Council representative, Tom Canning said.
The latter is where the ACA needs to be involved along with Teagasc, Canning said and called for mandatory training for farmers above 130kg of organic nitrogen (N) per hectare.
Involving ACA members would make a “significant contribution”, he said, and lead to “effective communication” with farmers and not “overregulation and knee-jerk reactions to water quality reports”.
ACA
ACA president Noel Feeney was also speaking at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine on the nitrates directive yesterday (Wednesday, February 28).
Mandatory annual training for all farmers with a specific focus on improving water quality would act as a “considerable help” to farmers in dealing with current challenges, Feeney said.
In providing this training, the ACA would work with state agencies and bodies to create consistent training and materials for members to impart to its farmers, he added.
Of the 127,000 farmers in Ireland, 43,000 are advised by Teagasc, 55,000 by the ACA, and 30,000 farmers do not have a “direct influence” from an advisor, ACA general secretary, Breian Carroll said.
He raised the importance of farmers in catchments receiving messages from the ACA which are in line with the objectives of the Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP).
Tools used by advisors in providing services to derogation farmers, such as the nutrient management planning system, must be provided without direct cost to members and farmers, Feeney said.
Nitrates derogation
Farmers in derogation have to comply with 39 measures which are in addition to the Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) standards, Feeney said.
The Nitrates Action Programme (NAP) has become “extremely difficult” for any farmer to comply with and for members to impart their knowledge and information to farmers, he added.
“Minor” administration breaches of regulations will result in rejection of the derogation application, two-year exclusion from the derogation, and “significant” cumulative penalties, he said.
“Simple errors” by advisors in preparing derogation applications on behalf of their farmer clients can result in those clients being excluded from the derogation for two years, Feeney said.
He added that the current derogation IT system needs a “complete overhaul” with dedicated funding to modernise it to ensure members and farmers have “trust” in the system.