There are further calls for suckler farmers to ensure they apply for the new Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot – Suckler (BEEP-S) scheme before the closing date of May 15.
Colm O’Donnell, the president of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association (INHFA), said that the new scheme is “by far the simplest and most straightforward intervention coming from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to date”.
“This scheme has emerged as a result of an acknowledgment by the Beef Market Taskforce of the need for additional direct support for sucklers,” O’Donnell added.
The new suckler scheme has a front-loaded payment on the first 10 cows, whereby a participant can draw down up to €90/cow/calf. Included in the make-up of the scheme are weighing, welfare measures and supplementary meal feeding.
“This pilot scheme coming from the department has the potential to form the basis for a decent support mechanism for primary suckler farmers in the next round of the CAP [Common Agricultural Policy]” O’Donnell argued.
He added: “With €35 million made available for 2020, it would be important that sufficient numbers of farmers apply to ensure full uptake of the funding for this year, as the Beef Data and Genomics Programme [BDGP] is due to finish in 2020.
“Further merging and development of a support structure for sucklers might finally become a reality,” O’Donnell remarked.
The unused BEAM [Beef Exceptional Aid Measure] scheme money must be channelled directly to support primary suckler cow farmers. This new BEEP-S scheme is the only acceptable avenue to do this in these unprecedented times.
The new scheme is based on a mandatory weighing action, which provides €50 per first 10 cow/calf weighings per herd (and €40/cow/calf weighing thereafter).
After that, there are two optional actions: a welfare action, with a choice of either a vaccination programme or a pre-weaning meal feeding programme (€30/weighing); and a faecal egg testing option aimed at controlling liver and rumen fluke (€10/weighing).