Greening payment claims by farmers: EIR release

Information requested

Information in regard to the number of farmers claiming Greening payments linked to agroforestry.

Response

• How many farms are eligible for Green payments.

All businesses that have BPS entitlements are eligible to claim Greening which is a top up of BPS payment. For scheme year 2024 there are 17,338 businesses that have claimed BPS and have BPS entitlements.

• How many farms have successfully claimed Greening payments (per year since 2015)

Scheme year	No. businesses with a greening payment
2015	18,388
2016	17,899
2017	17.774
2018	17,679
2019	17,526
2020	17,535
2021	17,546
2022	17,456
2023	17,397
2024	15,603 (paid to date 29/10/24)

Please note that payments for 2024 scheme year is not complete therefore number of successful claims will increase.

• What proportion and number of Greening applications include the Ecological Focus Area Agroforestry (EFAAS) option (per year since 2015)

The requirement to manage EFA areas is based on defined rules that are detailed within the Greening guidance based on claimed area of arable land. This results in businesses with large areas of grassland being exempt from having to manage EFA options.

Table shows number of businesses declaring an EFA agroforestry option and also those that actually have a EFA requirement under existing EFA rules that have declared the option.

Year	EFA agroforestry	actually have an EFA requirement
2015
2016
2017
2018	2	1
2019	2	2
2020	1
2021	2
2022	2
2023	7	3
2024	8	3

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