In mid-January this year. The Management Board of the National Council of Agricultural Chambers submitted a letter to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development requesting a change in the settlement dates for the implementation of eco-schemes. Just received an answer on this matter. What did the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development write?
The agricultural local government proposed considering the possibility of establishing the agrotechnical year (rather than the calendar year) as a determinant in the register of agrotechnical activities when settling the implementation of eco-schemes.
More on this topic in the article below:
Ecoscheme – annual intervention
Stefan Krajewski, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, referring in response to the KRIR letter to the issue of settling ecoschemes in the context of a calendar or agrotechnical year, noted that eco-schemes are a type of direct payments and are annual interventions. This means that the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization verifies and settles farmers in relation to the information contained in the payment application in a given year.
Only in the case of implementation of the practice Developing and following a fertilization plan can a different approach be used. This is because it is a requirement to both develop and follow a fertilizer plan. As a result of developing a fertilizer plan, the farmer has a document that can be verified, and in turn, compliance with the fertilizer plan can be verified based on entries from the register of agrotechnical treatments. Taking into account that the fertilizer plan is to cover all arable land (GO) and permanent grassland (TUZ) on the farm, it was allowed to prepare it in two stages:
- within 25 days from the deadline for submitting payment applications (for both spring and winter crops sown in year N-1, but declared in a given year in the payment application as the main crop) or
- by September 30 of the year in which the application for payment was submitted – in the case of winter crops sown in the year of submitting this application, which will be the main crop in the following year, unless winter crops were included in the first plan.
– It is only important that the aid for a given fertilization plan for the same area is paid only once (a farmer who has developed a fertilization plan by September 30 of year N for years N/N+1 and in year N applies for payments under the practice Development and compliance with a fertilization plan cannot receive payments under the above-mentioned practice on the basis of the same plan for the same area in year N+1) – we read in the response of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Agrotechnical year, calendar year – it doesn’t matter
– Regardless of the above, in the context of the possibility of combining certain practices, it does not matter whether the agrotechnical or calendar year is used to settle eco-schemes. It is important that there is no double financing, i.e. that there is no double payment for the implementation of the same environmental objectives or the same practices – we read further.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development explains that for this reason and bearing in mind that in the case of the Simplified cropping systems practice, the requirement is to leave all post-harvest residues in the form of mulch on the field after harvesting the crop in the main crop, and in the case of the Mixing straw with soil practice, the straw must be crushed after harvesting the main crop and mixing it with the soil or plowing it, it is not possible to combine these practices. Moreover, it should be noted that the above-mentioned the practices are performed in the same period, i.e. mixing straw with the soil (or plowing it in) as part of the practice is performed immediately after harvest.
– Enabling bundling to obtain payments under these practices would therefore mean paying twice for de facto the same activities – it was emphasized.
Referring in turn to the example of corn presented in the KRIR letter with the use of spring plowing and the mulch left after harvest, it should be noted – explains Deputy Minister Stefan Krajewski – that regardless of the approach whether it would be an agrotechnical or calendar year, in both cases the farmer due to the use of spring plowing plowing would not meet the condition for carrying out simplified cultivation.
– To sum up, I would like to point out that a change in the approach to the year of implementation of eco-schemes could lead to unequal treatment of farmers who fulfilled their obligations in a given calendar year – emphasizes the deputy head of the Ministry of Agriculture.
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