Greening rule changes
There are now 132 differing Countryside Stewardship Mid Tier options available according to Robert Gilbert of Natural England. He told a packed audience attending a meeting on Greening at the Staffordshire County Showground that nine of them are new to the five-year Mid Tier scheme including increased grants for hedgerow improvement, which began this month of March.
In an attempt to simplify the regulations for compliance of both greening and Countryside Stewardship schemes, Defra has altered some of the rules for 2018.
For example, the extension of buffer strips to include field margins if they are a meter or more wide may help farmers meet their Ecological Focus Area requirements. As previously, EFA rules apply to those with more than 15 hectares of eligible arable land and requires five per cent of that to comply within EFA rules.
The complete ban on plant protection products on EFA fallow land, EFA catch and cover crops, and nitrogen fixing crops makes these impractical to use as EFA for most farmers. A new rule means that exemption from EFA requirements only previously applied to farmers with more than 75 per cent of eligible land in grassland, or arable land as temporary grassland or fallow, if their remaining arable land was less than 30 hectares. That is no longer the case. EFA fallow is deemed to be permanent pasture after five years, and double funding of land for EFA options and Stewardship will not be allowed after January 1, 2019.
The new “farming rules for water” require all farmers to test soils for nutrients and produce a nutrient plan.
Staffordshire NFU County Advisor Jeremy Low spoke of the new Mid-Tier restoration and wild life offers including improving traditional orchards, and species rich and wet grassland areas to encourage breeding waders and wildfowl. There are seven options to help feeding of wild birds and improving nectar sources for pollinating insects, with the main priorities of all schemes being to restoring wildlife and nature.
With regard to farm payment schemes, he said some 2015/2016 payments had still to be made but 79,00 2017 payments had been received by January 26 this year. However, farmers must check that maps and payments received are correct, as an electric fence line can be aerially interpreted as creating two separate fields.
