The deadline is upon farmers for applications to be submitted to tranche 12 of the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Schemes (TAMS II).
The closing date for the current tranche is today (Friday, December 7).
As part of the TAMS II update issued by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine back in June, it was proposed that tranche 13 of TAMS II would open tomorrow (Saturday, December 8), and close on April 5, 2019.
Yesterday (Thursday, December 6), Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture Andrew Doyle announced that additional investment items have been included as eligible for grant-aid under the Organic Capital Investment Scheme.
Farmers will be able to apply for these new investments under the next tranche of the TAMS scheme from tomorrow onward.
Investment items to be incorporated include: grass/forage cutting and handling equipment; organic grassland and soil cultivation equipment; and organic horticultural/tillage machinery.
Sub-investment under the grass/forage cutting and handling equipment include: mounted mowers without conditioners; mounted mowers with conditioners; trailed mowers with/without conditioners; mounter mulchers; self-driven mulcher/mowers; mounted and trailer straw choppers; haybobs; forage rakes; and forage tedders.
Organic grassland and soil cultivation equipment takes into account sub-investment such as: spring tine grass harrows and chain harrows.
Organic horticultural/tillage machinery covers sub-investment including: inter row cultivators; flame weeders; brush weeders; rotary cultivator weeders; and CombCut weeders.
At that point, a total of 15,697 approvals have been issued under the scheme. Meanwhile, the number of payment applications submitted equates to 5,746.