An organic farmer has had his licence suspended for two years following an inspection that led to the detection of a “critical infringement”.
This found the farmer’s animals grazing on rented, non-organic land.
As a consequence, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) discovered that non-organic feed was being fed to the animals.
In addition to the licence suspension, the DAFM also decided that the farmer should repay all money received under the organic farming scheme (OFS) in which he had been participating since 2015.
On appealing the DAFM’s decision to the Agriculture Appeals Office (AAO), that demand to repay all OFS monies was set aside.
The AAO made this ruling due to compelling evidence in the case where “ongoing medical issues of a serious nature” concerning the farmer was provided.
However, the AAO upheld the DAFM’s decision to suspend farmer’s organic licence from September 2019 to 2021.
The farmer, however, contended there was no infringement and previous infringements had all been rectified.
Organic farmer and other cases
Details of this particular case were contained within the AAO’s annual report for 2021, which was published recently.
It was one of 281 decisions allowed, or partially allowed, representing 37% of decisions made.
According to the annual report, the AAO made 757 determinations in 2021, including 288 that were disallowed and a further 188 that were withdrawn or invalid.
Last year saw a 6% increase in the number of agriculture appeals received by the AAO, rising from 760 to 809.
The most appealed scheme last year was the Beef Data Geonomics Programme totalling 238 with 143 appealing against the Basic Payment Scheme.
The highest number of appeals came from Co. Cork with 76, followed by counties Galway with 66, Mayo with 59 and Tipperary with 55.
In another case, a farmer appealed a DAFM penalty that sought to reduce their 2020 EU Basic Payment Scheme, the Greening Payment, and other 2020 Area Based Schemes by 20%.
The DAFM imposed this sanction after a county council inspection found that slurry/soiled water was discharging from a farmyard to a field drain and going directly to a local river.
The inspection arose from a finding of a heavy water pollution incident where slurry was back traced to the farmer’s farmyard in question.
However, the appeal was disallowed after the appeals officer found that there were insufficient grounds to overturn the 20% sanction.
In dismissing the appeal, the appeals officer was cognisant of the significant off-farm impact that the slurry/soiled water from the holding had on water bodies in the locality.