REPS4 Must be Relevant to Commercial Farming

[Note: the 2006 REPS Conference proceedings are now available online.]

Teagasc advisors have just completed a very successful campaign in assisting farmers to join REPS before the REPS 3 closing date in October. Over 7,000 applications were completed by Teagasc planners this year bringing the total number of Teagasc REPS clients to 25,000. At the Teagasc National REPS Conference in Tullamore, today, 10 November 2006, the focus has switched to exploring the details of the new REPS 4 scheme.

Speaking at the conference Eugene Ryan, Head of REPS in Teagasc said that REPS 4 must address the challenge of being relevant to farming in both low output, high nature areas and also high output commercial farming areas. He welcomed the proposed opening up of the scheme to more commercial type farmers, with those farms where the organic Nitrogen levels are over 170kgs per hectare, being likely to qualify. But he warned that the scheme will require more imaginative features to enable it to deliver significant biodiversity enhancements.

Eugene Ryan said: "REPS4 must provide sufficient returns to support farmers to continue farming high value nature areas and give sufficient incentives to encourage farmers in the more commercial and productive areas to encompass environmental projects in their management practices. The outcome from REPS 4 must be of sufficient importance to enable REPS to be continued as a means of supporting farmers, and to produce an environmental product that will be of benefit to society."

Teagasc believe that this can best be achieved by including new measures related to land use and crop mix, livestock enterprise mix, the environment around buildings and linking in with wider Leader type projects.

REPS 4 is also likely to present new challenges for REPS planners. Eugene Ryan believes that the planner will be required to play a greater and a more environmentally focused role in REPS 4. The introduction of specific biodiversity options in REPS 3 are likely to be further enhanced and expanded in the new scheme. These options coupled with more targeted supplementary measures are a mix of actions designed to be applied at farm level for the improvement of specific identified ecological and agronomic issues.

The introduction of REPS 4 will require a new emphasis on training for both planners and farmers. The challenge for Teagasc is to provide training modules for farmer participants that are practical, focused and relevant and which would be mostly conducted outdoors.

REPS 4 will operate in a different context in the Rural Development Programme 2007- 2013 than previous REPS schemes. It must cope with the simultaneous introduction of the Nitrates Directive and Cross Compliance. It will be influenced by the direction farming takes as a consequence of the single farm payment (SFP) and the inevitable shift to part-time farming.