Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome the following departmental officials who will brief the Committee and answer any questions after the briefing: Dr Rosemary Agnew, director of agricultural policy; and Ms Aveen McMullan, acting head of the beef sustainability policy branch. Thank you for your attendance. I will open the floor for your presentation.

Dr Rosemary Agnew (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. Good morning, members. I am grateful to the Committee for giving us the opportunity today to give you a policy briefing on the suckler cow scheme.

The suckler cow scheme forms an integral part of the beef sustainability package in the sustainable agriculture programme. It forms phase 2 of the beef sustainability package. You will be aware that phase 1 — the beef carbon reduction scheme — was launched in January 2024. The suckler cow scheme has been developed and co-designed with the agricultural policy stakeholder group (APSG). It aims to encourage farm businesses to increase the percentage of eligible calving events in the Northern Ireland suckler cow herd that achieve a reduced age at first calving and a reduced calving interval over a four-year phased implementation period. A reduction in the age at which heifers calve and shorter intervals between calving events of suckler cows will help improve overall farm productivity and the efficiency of the suckler cow sector and also, importantly, provide environmental benefits through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

On the greenhouse gas emission reduction mitigation measures proposed for the first carbon budget period from 2023-27 in the first climate action plan, the beef sustainability package — both the beef carbon reduction scheme and the suckler cow scheme — is projected to deliver 25% of the emission targets required.

As I have previously mentioned, the scheme is planned to open and commence on 1 April and will run from 1 April to 31 March each year. Participating farm businesses will receive a payment for each eligible age at first calving event or calving interval event of beef-bred heifers and cows that meet the relevant scheme targets. Subject to the legislation that we hope to bring forward next week, funding for the suckler cow scheme will be from a redirection of funding from the farm sustainability transition payment scheme in 2025 and the farm sustainability payment scheme in 2026.

To be eligible for the suckler cow scheme, a farm business has to be eligible for both those schemes in 2025 and 2026 onwards, and the scheme will have a phased implementation plan to reduce age at first calving and the calving interval over a four-year period. The maximum age at first calving target in the first year of the scheme is 34 months. That falls to 32 months in year 2 and 29 months in year 4. The year-1 maximum calving interval target is proposed to be 415 days, falling to 405 days in year 2 and 385 days in year 4. Eligible calving events resulting from live, aborted or stillborn calves will be eligible for payment, but all calves need to be tagged, tested for bovine viral diarrhoea and registered on the Northern Ireland food animal information system (NIFAIS).

To ensure that the scheme complies with our state aid obligations, a quantitative limit on the maximum number of calving events that can receive a payment each year needs to be set at Northern Ireland level. It is proposed that that quantitative limit be set at 222,000 calving events. That limit has been established using the annual number of calving events that are registered for beef-bred heifers and cows on the animal and public health information system (APHIS) in the three-year period 2020-22. If, in any scheme year, the number of calving events eligible for payment exceeds the quantitative limit, a linear reduction will be applied at farm level on the number of calving events that a farm business will receive payment for. We will keep the quantitative limit under close review.

Application will be via an opt-in measure — the same as that used for beef carbon reduction. The payment rate that is proposed at this stage but is subject to the legislation that we will bring forward is £100 per eligible calving event for either age at first calving or calving interval for the relevant scheme year. That rate has been determined using analysis of DAERA-published five-year average gross margins per head for suckler cow enterprises in severely disadvantaged areas, disadvantaged areas and lowlands. Payment will issue to the eligible farm business where the suckler heifer or cow is registered at the time of the calving event, and eligible farm businesses will receive a payment in the following year. It is projected that around £18 million in beneficiary payments will be incurred in 2025-26, as recorded in your papers.

The scheme will be continually monitored and reviewed for unintended consequences. The Minister has asked us to undertake a review at six months, and there will be a further in-depth review at the end of the two-year period. As I said, Chair, we hope to introduce the legislation to implement the scheme next week.

Aveen and I are happy to answer any questions that you have on the policy. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you very much for that. I am sure that there will be a few questions. It looks like a good initiative. We will probably be ahead of the game on these islands, be it the UK or even this island, in having a financial incentive as part of a scheme for suckler cows. Is that a fair assessment: that we are ahead of the game in providing financial assistance for that? That is the first part. The second part is that you said that the top line is anticipated to be, I think, £15 million in the first round. If there are 220,000 births at £100 per calf, that works out at £22 million, if there is full uptake, but maybe it is based on a 75% uptake. Does the Department have enough headroom and capacity in resource to ensure that it is delivered and rolled out smoothly? Sorry for asking three questions in that way, but there is interest here.

Dr Agnew: Chair, I will start and answer your questions in reverse order. I will ask Aveen to come in towards the end on the incentives available in the other regions of the UK.

First, you are right: the quantitative limit is at 222,000 calving events. On the basis of the analysis that we have undertaken, we feel that there is sufficient headroom in the budget with the allocated £18 million to do that. The calving interval data that we hold demonstrates, for example, that 73% of calving intervals at the moment occur at 415 days and that 62% of age at first calving events happen below a maximum age of 34 months. We have taken that into account in setting the budget for the scheme. We are confident that our budget projections are correct, but it must be remembered that it is a voluntary scheme. Farmers need to take up the scheme, and they need to opt in.

One of your questions was about the resources to deliver the scheme. It will be a relatively simple scheme to administer. Farm businesses will just need to tick a box to opt in and then register their calves as per the normal processes. All of the work will be done in the background to lift records off NIFAIS. It will be driven off NIFAIS administratively in the Department. It is really critical that farmers register not just their live births but their dead births, because we recognise that those can occur for a number of reasons. Whilst they should be low, they do occur.

I will hand over to Aveen to give you a quick overview of what is going on in the other regions.

Ms Aveen McMullan (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Thank you, Rosemary.

The suckler cow scheme that we propose aims to increase productivity and, at the same time, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the sector. The Scottish suckler beef support scheme for the mainland and the islands provides direct support to specialist beef producers. A new eligibility condition has been introduced in 2025 to support efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions in the sector. In the Republic of Ireland, the suckler carbon efficiency programme aims to provide support to beef farmers to improve the environmental sustainability of the national beef herd by improving the genetic merit of the Irish suckler herd. That scheme provides no financial support towards reducing the age of first calving or the calving interval, with the focus being on genetic improvement.

Dr Agnew: You will hear that Scotland is moving towards a similar scheme but, at this point, has indicated only a calving interval of 410 days. Scotland will incentivise farmers to reduce their calving interval to 410 days.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): My final question is in two parts, if that is OK. To me, this genuinely seems to be a useful scheme to increase productivity, which is not often a term that we hear from the Department when we are talking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Are there any anticipated figures for what that reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will look like over the first four-year period? What work has been done or will be ongoing to ensure that family farmers are given the information and supported to achieve what is potentially realisable?

Dr Agnew: To answer your first question, I said in my introduction that the beef sustainability package will deliver greenhouse gas emissions for the first carbon budget period that are 25% of what is required. The suckler cow contribution to that is around 4% to 5%, but the most impactful measure is the beef carbon reduction scheme, so we just split it into two parts.

To help farmers, a series of awareness events around the sustainable agriculture programme, led by the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE), is ongoing. Those events will give farm businesses the opportunity to hear presentations and to discuss the suckler cow scheme in more detail to help provide that technical information. The scheme is about increasing productivity and efficiency; it is not about increasing production. That is what the word "productivity" means. Those awareness events are ongoing: tonight's is being held on the Enniskillen campus. A series of events will be held over the next couple of weeks. Webinars will be available on YouTube etc, if farmers want to avail themselves of that information at separate times, and it will be part of the ongoing work.

Next week, hopefully, when we bring forward the knowledge statutory rule (SR), you will hear about setting up peer-to-peer learning groups. Those will replace the business development groups, and we plan that suckler cow fertility and productivity will be part of the themed groups or areas in that. You will hear more about that next week.

Mr McAleer: Thank you for the presentation and for your presentation last week, which I found helpful. I have spoken to farmers who attended the roadshows recently and got good feedback. I am appreciative of that.

A couple of points were mentioned to me by farmers. You will appreciate that spring is a busy time for farming, with calving going on in spring herds now. Because the scheme is running from April, instead of from January, calves that are born now, at the busiest time of year for calving, will be excluded from the scheme until next year. Is that not disrupting the farmers' calendar?

Dr Agnew: I will come back on that point. You will be aware from our communications that the Department originally planned to commence the scheme on 1 January 2025. However, the UK Budget announcement on 30 October 2024 created a degree of uncertainty, and it was only on 19 December that the Executive agreed, in their draft consultation document on the Budget, to earmark the funding. That allowed us to start planning for the roll-out of the sustainable agriculture programme.

On 4 December 2024, the Minister announced his intention to move the opening of the suckler cow scheme to 1 April 2025 to allow us time to communicate the changes to farmers and give them the information. A few representatives expressed concern to us about running the scheme from April to March, rather than from January to December, and the fact that some farmers, within a calendar year, would have to work with two different calving-interval targets in the same calving season. That is exactly the point that you raise.

We have looked at the analysis of the annual calving pattern of beef breeding herds in Northern Ireland over recent years. Peak calving occurs in April, May and June, with upwards of 50% of suckler cow calving events occurring during those months. A further 31% of calving events occur in July through to December. That leaves around 20% that occur in January to March. Therefore, the issue around calving-interval targets from 1 April to 31 March will impact a small number — around 20% of farm businesses.

I recognise that, if you are the farm business that that affects, it will potentially be difficult. We have had discussions with the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) and broader stakeholders, and they are content because it is better to have the scheme rolling out to deliver the greenhouse gas emission reductions that we need to meet the obligations in the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 than to push it back for a year.

You said that the cows calving in January to March of the first year will not be eligible, but they will. The scheme year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so we are actually being kinder to those farmers because the cows that are calving now will have to calf within 415 days next year for farmers to get their payments. Therefore, they have more time to plan.

We will also roll out our business development and sustainability groups to help farmers get the technical knowledge. A lot of it is about communicating the changes so that farm businesses are aware. We felt that we needed the three months to do that or, at least, to begin it. However, that will continue through the years of the scheme. As I said, there will be reviews to see whether the targets are being met, whether the correct information is being put out and how we can help farmers achieve the aims. We are trying to incentivise a change but trying to do so in a phased way to drive that change.

Mr McAleer: Thank you for your indulgence, Chair. Rosemary, if a calf changes hands during that time, how is that handled?

Dr Agnew: The payment goes to the person who registered the birth of the calf. That should be the farm on which the calving event occurred. We pay on the calving event, not on the cow. We have had questions, which I will address now, as to whether a cow from the Republic of Ireland is eligible. It is the calving event that is eligible; it does not matter where the cow was born. It is the calving event on a Northern Ireland farm that qualifies. The farm business that registered that calf should be where the calf was born. That is the farm business that will receive the payment. If a calf changes hands at two months or three months of age, it will change hands anyway; that is the commercial market. However, it is a suckler cow scheme, so those calves should not change hands, because a suckler cow enterprise rears a calf for sale at some point at the end of the suckler period or finished as beef.

Mr McAleer: A number of farmers have said that it is difficult to get a first-time calver at 24 months back in calf; it could take a bit longer for their second calf. Is any grace period built into the scheme?

Dr Agnew: No. At the minute, there is no grace period. When we originally consulted on it — I am not sure that I have all of the figures — in 2021 and 2022, we proposed age-at-first-calving figures that were tighter: they ran from 30 months down to 27 months. We received significant pushback from stakeholder organisations at that time about people's ability to achieve those targets and about animal welfare concerns around calving heifers at too young an age, so, as a result of the consultation, we revised those targets to 34 months down to 29 months. Those were announced by our previous Minister in March 2022, and our current Minister has agreed that those targets remain. That is where the evidence takes us. Aveen might have the figure, but I think that 62% of heifers that calved over the past three years would meet that age-at-first-calving target on the basis of the information that we hold on NIFAIS.

Mr Irwin: Thank you, Rosemary and Aveen, for your presentation. You talked about the estimated 222,000 calvings. Do you know whether that number has been static, or has there been a downward trend over the past few years?

Dr Agnew: It is broadly static. That is the average over the past three years. There has not been much difference in the figures over those three years. We might have the individual yearly figures for those three years somewhere in our papers, but they are fairly static. Even though we see a reduction in the suckler cow numbers, which has been a concern of the industry over the past couple of years, we are not seeing a change in the number of calving events, so the suckler cow industry is becoming more productive and efficient and is helping us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Irwin: That is my take. I know that the number of cows has reduced. I welcome the scheme; it is a step in the right direction. I am not sure that £100 is enough of an incentive, but it is a help. How does the proposed scheme compare with Scotland's in monetary terms?

Dr Agnew: I will ask Aveen whether she has the answer to that question in monetary terms. I do not have it in my head, William. If Aveen does not have it in her notes, maybe we will need to come back to the Committee on that.

Ms McMullan: The Scottish suckler cow scheme has a budget of £40 million, but it is a flat-rate payment. The payment rate for each year depends on the number of eligible animals claimed in the calendar year. It is set yearly, so the rate will fluctuate. In 2023, there were 5,975 claimants, and the payment rate was £105 on the mainland and slightly higher for island animals.

Mr Irwin: I was just interested in the comparison. It is a welcome scheme, and I hope it will incentivise farms and focus minds, which has to be a good thing.

Miss McIlveen: Thank you, Rosemary, for the presentation today and for your time last Friday in Cookstown. It was informative. It will be useful for us as we move forward. I have been critical, but I thank you for that.

Declan covered the question that I was going to ask about misinformation about the scheme that was causing some concern, particularly regarding the start date and how that would have an impact on farms.

You talked briefly about the Irish Republic's scheme. The information that we have about the bovine genetic project that is coming forward in Northern Ireland suggests that that is more in line with what the ROI is doing, as opposed to anything that it is doing around suckler cows, the early births and the intervals. Will you talk a bit more about that? Is our scheme comparable in that respect?

Dr Agnew: You are right, Michelle, and thank you for your comments about the provision of information; I really appreciate that. Our scheme and the Southern scheme around genetics and suckler cows are linked to bovine genetics. Obviously, as we move forward, we hope to bring forward genotype genetic information of all breeding animals in Northern Ireland. That will help farm businesses select the animals that are likely to be more feed-efficient and likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and, indeed, we can select animals on the basis of their traits for passing on or contracting TB. There are a lot of positives in a genetics programme, and, as we move forward with the suckler cow scheme, we will encourage anybody who avails themselves of the suckler cow scheme to also become part of the bovine genetics programme.

In answer to your question, in Northern Ireland, we have gone a step further because we are trying to incentivise farmers to reduce their age at first calving to reduce their calving interval, because we know that that will improve their efficiency but also, importantly, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Committee will be aware of the information from the Climate Change Committee that suggests that Northern Ireland agriculture needs to reduce its cattle numbers if it is to achieve the targets. We have developed proposals that we have discussed with members of the Committee around maintaining the output of milk, beef, lamb etc without a significant reduction in livestock numbers. It is really just about removing those non-productive animals.

We are trying to incentivise change to meet the climate action plan targets with the suckler cow scheme, and that is where it diverges slightly from the scheme in the South. It is about trying to help everyone. I know that not every farmer will be able to avail themselves of a payment for every suckler cow every year. It is probably biologically impossible because something could happen at a calving: for example, a suckler cow might have to have a section or something, which will delay her going back into calf. It is about increasing the number of calving events in the suckler cow herd to drive productivity and efficiency, and then, as time goes on, we will bring in the genetic information to help farmers make breeding decisions.

Miss McIlveen: It is not about reducing numbers of herds.

Dr Agnew: No, it is not about reducing numbers of herds, but we have to recognise that a farm business with a cow that does not calve for two years is not an efficient cow, so why is she still on the farm? We are incentivising payments for getting a calving event, but we are not paying for cows that do not calve.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Are members content? Are there any other questions? OK.

Thank you so much; that was excellent. We really appreciate your time today.