The ending of REPS hit some farmers hard in 2015 with payments from environmental schemes down 60%.

That’s according to figures from the Teagasc National Farm Survey which were released this week by Teagasc.

It says the massive fall in Environmental payments due to the fact that the replacement for the REPS scheme which came to an end in 2014 is not as valuable.

Teagasc says payments from such schemes fell from 2,000 in 2014 to €700 last year. However, it noted that payments from the new GLAS scheme were lower as the scheme was only up and running for three months in 2015.

However, it was noted by Teagasc that payments under GLAS would be lower than that previously received by farmers in REPS. The Department of Agriculture plans that 50,000 farmers will have joined GLAS by the end of 2016 with maximum payments of €5,000 available to farmers.

Direct payments down 6%

Average direct payments to farmers declined generally in 2015. The Basic Payment Scheme was down 6%, half of which will be repaid later in 2016.

In 2015, Teagasc notes that market income (without direct payments) on the two cattle systems is close to zero, suggesting that these farms do not make a profit from production.

However, this is an improvement on negative market income situation in 2014.

Farm income continues to be highly reliant on direct payments. In 2015 the average total payment was €17,000 and this accounted for 64 percent of income on average. The Basic Payment, the largest direct payment, was €12,570 on average in 2015.

farm incomes 2

Tillage farms, have the highest direct payments, driven by the larger farm size in this system.