The payment claims system for Landscape Actions under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) is now open.

The opening of the payment claims system relates to ACRES participants who deployed Landscape Actions (LAs) in the first application window, which closed in September last year.

LAs are large-scale environmental actions focusing on issues such as threatened species, water-quality protection, invasive species management, and encroaching scrub management in "species-rich grasslands" in the ACRES Co-operation zones.

Farmers who wish to submit a payment claim for that first LA application window should approach their local ACRES Co-operation Project (CP) team.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon said that the opportunity is still available for ACRES participants to apply for LAs.

The minister said: "These actions are a unique, integral, and innovative element of ACRES, supporting farmers to enhance environmental outcomes on their holdings, thereby increasing their ACRES payments.

The first application window for Landscape Actions attracted some 840 applications; this increased to 1,120 in the second window.

"I encourage farmers who wish to apply for funding available to them through LAs to continue to engage with their CP Teams to support them in making new applications via the third application window which is currently open," Minister Heydon said.

Landscape Actions

The third and current application window for ACRES Landscape Actions opened on August 12.

Minister Heydon said at the time that these actions "are and continue to be important complementary environmental actions available under the ACRES Co-operation approach, which is available to farmers in defined high priority geographical areas".

He added that they "help participants to improve the habitat quality of their land, which may in turn increase the score of that land, resulting in a higher payment for the participant".

According to the minister, the level of applications in the first and second application windows had been "encouraging".