Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 8 November 2022
1283. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if his Department has engaged local farmers in advance of the launch of the current ACRES scheme to elicit feedback on sustainability and conservation of the rural landscape; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54996/22]
View answerACRES, the new agri climate rural environment scheme, will enable the participation of some 50,000 farmers in a targeted, innovative and environmentally ambitious scheme, through the ACRES General approach or the ACRES Co-operation approach.
This new scheme builds upon the experience of farmers participating in previous agri-environment schemes such as GLAS and REAP (Results-Based Environment Agri Pilot Project). The purpose of REAP, a pilot agri-environment project, was to help farmers and their advisors, and my Department to test some innovative actions and results-based scoring, and to build up knowledge in advance of the rollout of ACRES from January 2023. 3,700 farmers participated in REAP and the resulting feedback played an important role in the development of the ACRES scheme.
In addition, my Department engaged in an unprecedented level of public consultation in developing the new CAP strategic plan.
In developing ACRES my Department has also drawn on the learnings of the very successful European Innovation Partnership (EIP) projects which have been funded by my Department in recent years. These EIP projects, such as the Hen Harrier and Pearl Mussel programmes amongst many others, encourage co-operation and innovation in dealing with challenges facing agriculture, the environment and the rural economy.
By bringing together farmers, scientists and advisors these project groups were able to elicit and build on the local knowledge and information from farmers, in establishing and running these projects. Local knowledge and expertise of the farmers involved in relation to the conservation of their local rural landscape and the sustainability of agricultural practices were all combined together with research from scientists to provide the solutions to local challenges.
It is this significant co-operative work which provides the basis for the ACRES Co-Operation approach which will now be at a national scale involving some 20,000 farmers. Many of these EIP project groups have now established as ACRES Co-Operation Teams and are utilising that important feedback that they have received from farmers in these areas in establishing their projects in the ACRES CP zones.
CP teams, now established in each of the 8 CP zones, are communicating regularly with the farmers in these areas in the development of their Local Action Plans for their zones. Farmer input, both through the previous EIP work and through involvement with the current CP teams, have resulted in the development of a scheme that aims to deliver significant long-term environmental improvement across the country.
