New Acres scheme

coolshannagh28

The Irish Dexter society deserve some credit here for their input on these measures.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119487030#Comment_119487030

Red clover in a grass silage crop cannot be grazed. You have to take 3-4 cuts of silage. It might only last 4 ish years before have to reseed again. You cannot set it again in the same field.

Combi crops are grand but if you want to include grass in the crop you need to really limit the amount of grain etc you use. I have grown barley and grass, peas barley and grass as well as grass, RC and barley.

The only grass seed that will survive in combi crops is a hybrid or Italian. These only last three years before they start to die out of the sward. But it's impossible to get them completely out of the grass sward.

Combi crops also have the problem that you have a lot of straw in the silage. You need to move this out of the feed face if you are finishing cattle.

I am going to concentrate on getting white clover into grazing ground, maybe even MSS but I will be slow going looking trying combi or RC silage crops

893bet

From my reading you can graze RC with light cattle and it can last far longer than 4 years of allowed flower at least once per year.

be good for some input from people using it.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119487497#Comment_119487497

Maybe but you need dry land and dry weather. When I had RC there could be no spring grazing as ground can be too soft most years. Ideally if you want it to flower, you want it to flower at the first cut as your grass if late varieties they will not be flowering until end of May. As you cannot graze in spring you will have a huge crop.

You will find it hard to even maintain perennial ryegrass in the sward

mr.stonewall

Would be a small few acres solely focused on multicut Red clover bales. Primarily for weanlings and stores

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119487528#Comment_119487528

I never saw super performance from these swards. You need a four cut system to get the really super silage. Because of that you are going to cut either the grass or the RC out of the sward in 4ish years. Remember RC is high in P which is poor to preserve in silage. Cattle were never really mad about it. When you add reseeding costs you are saving very little. You cannot put RC back into the same land you grew it on originally. Therefore it has to carry two reseeding costs.

I am going to try WC in the silage sward and see how it works especially in the second cut and for grazing afterwards

Remember as well if you are going to use slurry as a P& K source you will have an issue with docks and it's very hard to spray to control them

Young95

Is this scheme open yet folks ? I’m hearing all bout it but unsure if it’s actually open yet ?

tanko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119492928#Comment_119492928

It’s not open yet but you’d want to be letting your planner know if you’re interested in joining, not everyone who wants to join the scheme might get in this year i reckon.

endainoz

The score based system for fields is not with my while in organics anyway. Score less than 8 out of 10 and we get zero, waste of time I think. I like the idea of planting some trees, and the LESS is something most will do here. Hard to find many actions that will suit though. The scoring really makes a balls if things.

endainoz

I have seen in a couple of places that this scheme makes farmers "sign off their carbon credits" if they sing up to it. In the small print of the scheme documentation apparently. I couldn't find anything on it myself, did anyone else have any luck? If it's just speculation, that's fair enough, but we know the way these farming FB groups tend to exaggerate things.

J.O. Farmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119501948#Comment_119501948

That would be such a major condition that they would have to draw your attention to it.

Legally it would be open to challenge as an unfair term otherwise.

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119501948#Comment_119501948

A local farmer that I met in the shop last week told me that you will loose 25% of your SFP unless you sign up to the ACRES scheme 😪. There is so much scaremongering going on in the media about carbon emissions that people are running blind whilst we continue to allow the construction of more and more electricity guzzling data centres yet at the same time we're listening to warnings on the radio about probable ESB power outages this Winter - as Wrangler would say, "you couldn't make it up"

Edit to add - I'm sitting in the kitchen at home about 5 miles from Dublin airport as the crow flies and there are nearly as many airplanes flying in and out as there a cars passing by on the road.

Tomjim

if you reduce your stocking rate to 1.2 per hectare, how much per hectare would you get for this measure in Acres?

ruwithme

Agree on the data centres above, it seems though it's the price to pay for eire being regarded as a tech company hub, with many above average salaries paying loads of paye taxes.

On the metal tubes in the sky, finance man pascal claimed in recent times, "we are a island nation & couldn't possibly put a travel tax on air travel "

endainoz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119502690#Comment_119502690

Ah yeah I was thinking, more just scaremongering with no real proof. There was a similar sentiment against the soil sampling scheme.

Markus Antonius

Do people foresee this being as big a pain in the arse as Reps was?

893bet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514423#Comment_119514423

Look at is……it seems to be. But it’s important to grab any free money that is going.

The lad below in this weeks farming independent paints a bad picture for Glas but there will always be people on “margins” that don’t go well.

Markus Antonius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514748#Comment_119514748

I'm sure his experience is tame compared to a lot out there.

With the "green" influence on this scheme, I'm sure we'll inevitably be welding catalytic converters to our cattle to prove compliance.

I'm in one of the special areas that has the 10k cap so wondered if it would be worth giving it a go...

endainoz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514974#Comment_119514974

10k is one thing but 2.5k of that is "ringfenced" for whatever cooperative project that your area is earmarked for. The 10k is a bit misleading. I'm finding it hard to find the actions that suit me really but I'll have to supplement the loss of GLAS like everyone else some way.

Dinzee Conlee

Looking at the scheme, and the way it’s put together - I would only qualify for about 2.5-3k

This would be tier 3

To qualify for tier 2, and plant the 100 trees - I’d get far less payment.

This is due to the way they have the various options laid out, and what you can do on each parcel… With low input grass, you can’t do much at all - which rules out a lot of options for me…

But - like others have said - need to fill the $$$ hole left by GLAS… 🙁

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514423#Comment_119514423

REPS was by far the best scheme to date. GLAS was ok for us, we got paid for the actions that we choose of which LIPP was one which is something that I regret as those fields have a good crop of thistles, docks and some creeping nettles. Don't get me wrong, I don't want mono culture green fields but because that land doesn't contain rushes we couldn't weed lick. I know some farmers ignored that fact and weed licked/sprayed their land but we choose not to do so. On the flip side we got a contractor in to spray a small field (Forefront T) that wasn't part of the GLAS actions and I'm sorry we did as the spray killed the clover.

893bet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119515443#Comment_119515443

we have not sprayed in a few years and some clover growing aswell. Have a decent bit of rag and thistles also but going to try get in control with the Napsack. Commit a few full days to it in the spring and autumn.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119514974#Comment_119514974

Consider the amount of measures you would need to get to that 10k.

Silverdream

I feel the scheme in its current form is a right let down to the average farmer. The Intensive lad was never going to look at it, but it's all those middle of the road farmers who are left wondering what to do now.

The Lipp is a joke now, next impossible to hit the high marks. I have fields that never got much fertilizer if any yet you'd only see 2 to 3 species of grass. Buttercups, thistles docs, rushers and felistrums are all seen as weeds and are marked negatively!! You can't win, I don't know how or who they devise thee schemes but they work against the grain.

A 3-4k payment on the average farm just doesn't cut it anymore. Too many hoops , paperwork and inspectors to be bothering for that type of payment in this day and age.

farawaygrass

Just thinking out loud here but if a lad was to get only say 3k, would it be worth his while? Between expenses of some measures and possibly cutting stock numbers in others. Ya it’s 3k but that hasn’t near the same spending power as 3k had for the majority of glas.

im Only thinking of myself as an example I’ve a lot of fencing down around walls the last few years so Doing the measure of fencing so many metres out from a wall wouldn’t work.

im probably in tier 3 now and to get into tier 2 would mean cutting production of some sort.

like bass I picked fields for lipp and there is a blanket of thistles in two.

we haven’t reseeded in years but definitely don’t have enough wildflowers to make any significant contribution towards payment.

I’ll have to sit down with the planner with an open mind but my view right now is this is far from a great scheme

Tileman

Yea me too on the thistles in the lipp. I have one field absolut destroyed by them. Topping doesn’t cut them back.

i was getting near full amount in current Glas. Can only seem to 2-3k on this one. Not sure if I’ll bother for the hassle

Birdnuts

Yeah - the more I read about the scheme the more underwhelming it appears to be. At least I have a bit of SAC land that gets me in that way without too much expense, also lucky to have a variety of EIP schemes here in Erris North Mayo that are much better designed and rewarding for the farmer and nature.

Jim Simmental

yes definitely not worth the hassle for about €3,000 and pay planners fees then - I’ll be giving this one a miss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119517511#Comment_119517511

Markus Antonius

Good FJ article here showing some case studies and considerations:

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/mixed-reaction-to-acres-measures-718206

I don't understand the "Commonage" part. I have 10 acres commonage in one of the co-operation project zones. At €145 ha/year I would get 400-500 just for having the commonage. is this correct? The caveat being I may not be accepted on the scheme unless I agree to taking on some of the other less desirable measures like planting hedgerows?

Danzy

If they are negative marking for feilstrim, butter cup etc that's a pure bollix.

Devil in the details.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119522181#Comment_119522181

Can these marking schemes be amended later.....if they were to say face enough justified criticism...

If they don't pay out because you have too much of a particular kind of thistle or buttercup could you just go ahead and farm away the way you want to on that parcel/area......it wouldn't be like they could take the money they didn't give you back

Or is it a case of all money for all actions taken if your low input non scientific species selective cluster **** is scored below par

Where the feck are the marking scoring schemes ..... are they afraid no one would bother if it wasn't such a pig in a poke I wonder.....

I'd better see some lipstick on this pig soon ..