The Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine (DAFM) has announced the opening of the 2023 Tillage Incentive Scheme (TIS), with a €10 million budget.
The TIS aims to provide support to tillage farmers who continue to maintain the current tillage area converted under TIS 2022 and allow for additional conversion to tillage crops in 2023.
The TIS provides for two rates of payment, as follows:
- A payment of €400 per hectare for area newly converted to tillage in 2023;
- A maintenance payment of €200 per hectare for area converted in 2022 and a farmer maintaining their tillage area in 2023.
To qualify for the scheme, a valid 2023 BISS application must have been submitted, declaring the eligible crops for the scheme.
Farmers wishing to apply for the 2023 TIS should do so through www.agfood.ie before the closing date of July 7th, 2023.
The Tillage Incentive Scheme was first introduced in 2022 as a direct result of the impact on Irish agriculture and supply chains arising from the situation in Ukraine and the availability and price of animal feed and fertilisers in Ireland.
According to Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, the Tillage Incentive Scheme in 2022 was “a success”, with a 6% (over 20,000 hectares) increase in tillage area over 2021.
There is an ambition for continued growth of the tillage sector, as highlighted in the Food Vision 2030 Strategy and more recently in the Climate Action Plan, where a target has been set to increase the area under tillage crops to 400,000ha by 2030.
ACRES courses
As reported by us last week, the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine (DAFM) has launched its ACRES Training Scheme, which will provide specialist training to farmers in the €1.5 billion flagship agri-environment scheme.
Some 46,000 farmers have commenced their contracts under ACRES, and the purpose of this ACRES Training Scheme (ATS) is to increase farmer knowledge on the way in which ACRES actions are to implemented.
The ACRES Training Scheme (ATS) is accordingly being provided to enable ACRES participants to fulfil this requirement.
Participants in ACRES are required to attend a mandatory training course within their first year of participation in ACRES.
Read more on this news article.
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