Change to derogation

What are the rules regarding renting a bit of rough ground an hour from your farm, leasing entitlements for it and letting a local man let a few horses or cattle/sheep on it to keep under the 170kgn/ha at home?

You are meant to have a different herd number if part of your have is over 20 mile / 32 KM away. Definitely should not have other peoples livestock on land you are claiming for.

It's also a pretty **** thing to do, out bidding local smaller farmers out of marginal land to bend the rules to overstock your own farm in another part of the country. No doubt it probably happens though.

I have an outfarm 8ish miles away. It isnorth of 40ac owned that I bought in 2011 and I rent another 38 adjoining it so it is large enough to be worth travelling to.

Everyones circumstances are different, but with that much already away from home meeting all of my silage requirements, I have no interest in renting land unless it is across the ditch.

From the Herd number application form

Regardless, its bad form to rent land in a cheaper area with no intention of farming it just to keep yourself under derogation limits.

There's loads doing this, I know a cork diary farmer renting 200 acres of rough ground in the west for nitrates

Well this is where it will bite them eventually,

If farmed himself it's not so bad..........

If stocked by someone else, then technically he is way over stocked plus in breach of a couple of disease control rules.

And if left empty then it really is unfair on the local farmers who wanted to farm it.

Satellite inspections will sooner or later catch out a lot of these lads and they will be refused derogation in future.

No correlation between derogation farmers and farmers who take land at a distance.

I've seen more take land to stay out of derogation.

That will change now due to the forced reduction..

Hardly...can't be refused derogation if you're not in one.

With dero at 220 and a cow at 92 kg you’d be understocked imo definitely at 106 kg you would be

Couldn’t blame lads for renting maps

I wonder will the eye in the sky become the checker

I would imagine so, there is a service measuring grass by satellite, couldn't be hard using a bit of AI to monitor exact stocking levels compared to claimed.

No doubt,

Just to be clear I wasn't questioning what level the derogation should be, just those obviously abusing the system will only make things more difficult for everyone else, from the little guys being priced out of land that's not even going to be farmed except on paper, to everyone else in derogation who will be monitored more and more closely.

Hang on, I may not be a "full time" farmer but my living certainly does depend on it.

I just happen to have 2 "part time" jobs to make up one average "full time" income and it is all agri related.

I can assure you also that many part-time farmers are in derogation or doing their best to work within the limits to remain out of it.

Well it's easy for someone with a small block of land that buys in all of the fodder to end up needing derogation, there are also plenty of Dairy farm partnerships where at least some of the partners need off farm income. I didn't say they were doing "paper" exercises to stay out of derogation that wouldn't be my definition of working within the limits, but the consensus of the conversation in this thread seems to suggest everyone is or should be at it.

I can, and you should too, but hay...........

That exact situation makes a complete mockery of derogation and Entitlements/BISS etc and goes to show with enough money behind you, you can do as you like! While some lads struggle others buy their way out of trouble, which as usual just makes the biggest lad's bigger.

I'm sure I can keep my morals and survive, thanks.

Questioning the situation doesn't make me bitter, I'm somewhat surprised at the opinions on here, but it won't haunt me outside of this conversation either.

@emaherx you seem very peeved that anyone would pay money for land rent yet not farm that land for their own benefit.

Yet you've no problem with anyone taking land to farm?

It's the system has the first farmer doing so. The way they obviously think is they have enough land of their own to fully feed stock without farming that land. It's the system that was dreamt up is making that farmer take that land on paper. They're no more wrong than the farmer taking land to farm.

I take land to farm. And I make and post how I see the situations. If you've to farm you've to be completely pragmatic and not dogmatic in these situations or with farmers.

There's people ploughing and tilling land today without any derogation on nitrates.

That ploughed and tilled ground will release 20 to 30 mg/litre whilst the permanent pasture ground will average around 5 mg/litre. That's derogation land in pasture included. The cow releases nitrates in dung with a carbon source to hold that nitrate. Urine is tricky. But for the talk of slurry at least the urine is mixed with a carbon source to slow down leaching. Coupled with when it's spread on ground under plant cover (permanent pasture) with an intact microbiome and soil carbon to boot it's the hardest situation to get nitrate to leach away.

Contrast this with what is allowed and promoted and not vilified in this country and hardest on ground (life, carbon). That is tillage. You till the ground. You expose the soil life to degradation. That exposes their carbon to oxidation to CO2 gas which allows the nitrates which they held to leach away.

So you have the cow with a derogation at a leachate rate of 5.

And a tillage with a leachate N rate of 20 to 30. With no derogation or license.

But that's the anti cow, pro tilling for plant EU we live in today.

One's vilified and constantly argued about in the press. The other is silence.

Emaherx all they'd have to do is put a couple of weanlings on the land then for you to be satisfied.

It's the landowner and the person taking are involved.

As far I see in all this the land is most likely being farmed anyway. But by someone else.

If you were a dept of ag minister or official what would you do @emaherx to resolve the situation? And how?

And who is looking after those weanlings?

We've had that guy doing that here locally, weanlings were on the road daily as they had little grass and no checking of fences, with all the local farmers getting the blame, calls daily about "their" cattle being on the road and the actual owner 2 counties away.

No idea what I'd do as minister for Ag, but I suspect satellite inspections and AI will be used eventually to work out exact stock numbers on land and where. I don't always agree about the rules but that is not the issue either.

There'll be points both financially and from a fodder point of view when taking land to not farm it just won't be viable.

I could have a thousand cows on a postage stamp but they still need to be fed.

It's all land, land, land atm in this country. 🙂

Whats being dished out on farmers here is a disgrace...profoundly obscene.

We can't honestly keep returning the same parties that we have done for the past 30 years, that have really screwed us over of late, and expect a different outcome.

Is it time to bite the bullet and risk an alternative?

In fairness to the EPA they have never held back on the sewage issue which has featured in all their reports on water quality up till now - the report itself is interesting in that the raw sewage issue appears to be 99% at coastal towns/villages rather than affecting inland streams,lakes etc. which are under pressure from Septic tanks as well as Agri sources. At the end of the day the Derogation loss was primarily down to the failure to implement existing laws leading to too many clowns being indulged on the likes of wet weather slurry spreading in the depths of winter etc.