The Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine (DAFM) has agreed to changes regarding the Knowledge Transfer Programme requirements for farm advisors after concern was raised that it would be an ‘impossible feat’ to get all aspects of the KT programme complete by the March 31 deadline.
President of the Agricultural Consultants’ Association (ACA) Noel Feeney said his association along with Teagasc advisors met with DAFM officials yesterday (Wednesday, January 17) to discuss concerns about the pressure.
The KT Programme is a three-year programme administered by DAFM and is delivered by a network of approved KT facilitators, with farmers participating in the programme.
The programme aims to foster knowledge exchange and innovation between advisors, farmers and other stakeholders and DAFM said that it will play a crucial role in helping farmers meet current and future challenges.
For each year of the Knowledge Transfer Programme each participant will receive reimbursement of €750 where all the requirements of the programme have been met.
Facilitators will receive €500/yr for each participant in their group or groups where all the requirements of the programme have been met.
Pressure on advisors regarding KT programme
Earlier this week on Agriland’s AgriFocus podcast, Feeney raised the issue and said the criteria for completing KT obligations was “unworkable”.
“It has been a hectic 15 months, advisors have felt the pressure,” he stated on the podcast.
“The KT was a fine scheme back in 2015/2016 where we got farmers together in a group and we discussed things like water quality and slurry spreading. Farm advisors facilitated the groups.
“In the new KT, we now have eight group meetings to do versus five [previously] and there is one one-to-one meeting.
“A circular came out from the department last week that those one-to-one meetings – you could only do two per day and they had to be done by the end of March,” he said at the time.
Feeney argued that DAFM had “moved the goalposts” and meant it would overlap with Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) schemes such as Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS), Complementary Redistribution of Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS), eco-schemes and a busy soil sampling programme.
He had called for “common sense” to be implemented as such obligations would put “more pressure on the advisory system”.
DAFM changes to KT requirements
Today (Thursday, January 18), the ACA president has confirmed to Agriland that the matter has now been resolved with DAFM following a meeting yesterday with ACA and Teagasc advisors.
Noel Feeney told Agriland today: “We highlighted the issues on the workability of the one-to-one meeting. You could only pre-book over five days and you could only do two per day and those two had to be from two different [KT] groups.
“We explained that we have had 15 months of constant deadlines… it was totally unworkable for all the advisory services.
“The department took it all on board and what they have agreed to is that we can do four meetings per day now, so we’ve doubled up straight away,” Feeney added.
He said the requirement that the farmer participants be from different KT groups on any given day has also been abandoned and also the option of doing the one-to-one meetings on Saturdays has also been agreed with the department.
“Say you had three groups and you had 20 farmers in each group, you could now potentially get those one-to-one meetings done in the week,” Feeney explained.
However, DAFM has remained rigid on the March 31 deadline for completion of the meetings.
Moving forward with these amendments to the KT programme obligations will require the department’s I.T system to be updated and amended to allow farmers and advisors book more than just two one-to-one meetings in a day.
It is understood that this work will commence immediately and advisors have been led to believe that this I.T work should be completed within a short timeframe.
“We’ve been informed that it shouldn’t [take] too long, but if it is, then we will have to look at other contingency situations. It’s a positive outcome and that’s the main thing,” Feeney concluded.