Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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310. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on CAP regulation 1307/2013 and the current hectare thresholds for greening requirements and their impact on smaller sized farms; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19064/17]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Regulation (EU) 1307/2013 established rules for direct payments to farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy.  Included in the Regulation are the various articles that relate to "agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment", more commonly known as Greening. 

Greening has three distinct provisions; Crop Diversification (CD), Ecological Focus Areas (EFA) and Permanent Grassland.  Payments of over €360 million per annum are made under the Greening scheme and while all farmers are subject to greening, exemptions for grassland farmers means that it is approximately 7,000 farmers in the tillage sector who have to comply with these measures. 

Under CD farmers with between 10 and 30 ha of arable land have to grow at least 2 crops, with those with over 30 ha having to have at least 3.  Furthermore the main crop has to be more than 75% of the arable area, with the two crops not greater than 95%.  Farmers with less than 10 ha are exempt.  Tillage farmers with more than 15 ha of arable land are also required to have 5% EFA on their holdings.

Based on the 2014 cropping practices of Irish farmers prior to the introduction of Greening, approximately 3,000 had to modify the number and/or area of crops sown in 2015 to comply with greening.  For the remaining 4,000 the crop rotation in place at the time meant that they already met the CD thresholds.  In terms of EFA compliance, features already present on Irish farms such as hedges and land drains meant that over 90% of the 6,000 EFA farmers were already compliant.  It was therefore only approximately 600 herds that had to undertake new measures, such as catch crops, to comply with greening.

I would like to acknowledge the efforts made by farmers and their agents to comply with these new measures and while for some the changes to farming practices did cause some difficulties compliance with both CD and EFA has been extremely high as witnessed by the very low level of reductions on greening payments in 2015 and 2016.

Specifically with regard to the smaller sized tillage farms who have to comply with the 2 crop rule, I have through staff of my Department made a number of approaches to the Commission on the issue of equivalent practices with a view to simplifying them.