The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, has said farmers in the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) “will not be negatively impacted” by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) beef index changes introduced late last year.
Speaking at the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) annual general meeting (AGM) in Athlone yesterday (Thursday, February 1), Minister McConalogue also said he had ” listened to feedback from stakeholders in recent months”.
Earlier this week the minister announced what he had described as “flexibility” for farmers in SCEP.
He told ICSA members that this means that female offspring of genotyped females in SCEP herds that do not become eligible for SCEP on their own genomic evaluation, “may become eligible if their sire and dam meet a minimum requirement on the September 2023 ICBF evaluation”.
“That is where the dam was 3-, 4- or 5-star and the sire 4- or 5-star on the Replacement Index, this female offspring will be considered SCEP eligible even if, when they are genotyped, they are not evaluated as 4- or 5-star in their own right,” Minister McConalogue said.
But during the ICSA AGM it was clear that SCEP remains a contentious issue and regardless of the new flexibility the minister believes is now built into the scheme, the message from farmers yesterday was that push back remains against the fact it is tied to Bord Bia.
Minister McConalogue
Separately Minister McConalogue said he recognised that the “policy churn and changes for farmers” as a result of the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) meant a lot for farmers to “grapple” with – not just in Ireland, but across Europe and this was highlighted by the farmer-led protests which have taken place.
But he said that the “heavy lifting on policy” had been done and this year he wanted to focus on “giving farmers the confidence and stability to get on with producing food, to get on with farming”.
“Since mid-October, we distributed €1.742 billion to farmers in Ireland across 18 different schemes under the CAP with payments continuing every week.
“The budget for 2024 is over €3 billion when direct payments are included,” the minister added.
ACRES
One key issue that was also raised during the ICSA AGM was the delay to Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) payments for some farmers – which Minister McConalogue acknowledged.
“Disappointingly ACRES Co-operation Project payments have proven more complex to administer and this has unfortunately meant that payments have not issued yet but work is ongoing in this regard with every effort being made to deliver payments as quickly as possible,” he said.