New Acres scheme

Anyone have fields scored yet, I believe the training was meant to be completed and inspections to start from this week.

100% agreed...im in a similar situation..

I'm not in ACRES but I met my advisor the other evening and he said he has been scoring fields for the last 10 days.

I did take some and have videos taken but doesn’t show the extent of what I had. I don’t spread any fertiliser or slurry up there and have topped and licked according to the guidelines I’m most of the place,

I texted my ag advisor today to see when he will be about.

I have a massive abundance of the branched moss with lichen and heather too.

I’ve a 5 acre field over grown with ragwort, 3 days pulling and still not a dent, I’d love to just bale it up and take out the bales and dump and expose the moss and target the ragwort Next spring with “spot spraying”.

Well that's not the farmers fault......therefore by the principles of natural justice they shouldn't be penalised.......riiight?

😂 genius, I can't see them objecting to that at all!

You can take a photo of a photo... But the acres man has to be in the field as he has to use an acres app on his phone which will turn green once he is in the correct acres plot.... Well that was case for me anyway.

Do you get the results on the day?

And how did you do?....is it marked out of 10?

I do not know why planners ( well I do its worth more to them) put farmers in for the scored LIG.

Planner should have been able to identify the positive indicator species. TBF my Teagas planner could. Even though they were present because I had only 2HA he put me in for the unscored grassland@ 250/HA

Was the much to removing the area from your organic payment or does that happen automatically?

The 2ha was removed as it would be a double payment.

I'm just hoping to get the bottom score for LIG and get the 250 per ha.

Yeah, I still haven't been scored yet, am in a CP zone so had no choice with different actions. Being organic too means I have to score 8 or higher, I'm not overly confident I must say. Supposed to get scored this week at some point.

You could be right, I also had my scoring done yesterday. Luckily mostly 8s and one 9, one 7 and one 0 (!) In fairness the zero was a terribly rough place that hadn't been touched with beast or machinery in a long time so it didn't surprise me.

In fairness most fields will have the species or plant needed to get a higher score. What brings the score down is stuff like abundance of thistles or ragwort, if a field has more than 5% it will negatively impact the score.

The real kicker that will probably affect people as it affected me, is that a farmer will get penalized for using boundary fences instead of stone walls or hedgeing. Yes you heard that right. To be a bit more technical, a stone wall or hedge will give you marks, where as a regular fence won't. So it will always keep your fields from getting a full 10/10.

Being in a CP area, what I'm looking forward to is the list of actions I can take to improve the farm, such as fencing and scrub cleaning. Will definitely be getting a good bit of fencing done each year so the place will be improved at the very least.