Following the confirmation today, Friday, November 1, that the deadline for measuring and submitting the weights of calf/cow pairings has been extended under the Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot (BEEP) scheme, farmers are being encouraged to take advantage of it.
Joe Healy, president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), welcomed today’s announcement from Minister Michael Creed that the two dates – for taking weights and submitting the data – would be extended by one week each.
Farmers now have until November 8 to take weights, and until November 15 to submit the resulting data to the Irish Cattle Breeders Federation (ICBF). The previous closing dates were November 1 (today) and November 8 respectively.
Healy said that he had been “in direct contact” with the minister on the possibility of getting an extension to the scheme.
The outgoing IFA president encouraged “farmer applicants under the scheme to immediately weigh cows and calves in order to qualify for the €40 payment”.
The minister pointed out this morning that, up until now, there have been some 350,000 individual sets of weight data for cow-calf pairings submitted to the ICBF.
Healy argued that “there is potential for another significant volume of data to be submitted”.
Commenting during today’s announcement, the minister said: “I have listened carefully to requests from farm bodies and have now agreed to an extension of a further week to the dates by which animals are to be weighed and weight data submitted.
“My department will continue to pay participants as individual cases are cleared, and regular pay runs will be in place over the coming weeks to ensure this,” Minister Creed added.