The RPA have today announced that they will extend the final claim date for the Small Grant Scheme to 31st July 2020 in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. The claim deadline for all CPSG claims was originally set as Midnight on 31st May 2020. We would suggest you still try to claim as soon as possible, particularly given the current situation, but all items must be in place at the location stated in your application and operational, before you submit your claim. Don't forget you

Despite previous refusals to even consider it, the Government have announced that it is pursuing plans through Parliament to relax the three crop rule for all farmers for 2020. This news will come too late for many of you, as the seed is in the shed, but it will remove the pressure of working to try to get a small area of a third crop in the ground when you are already dealing with very tricky ground conditions. This will be a blanket derogation for all farmers for 2020. We w

With Freshways cutting milk price and delaying payments, we are starting to see the impact of Covid-19 coming through in to Agriculture. It is essential that you start planning now to minimise the impact to your business. FEED Feed markets are currently very volatile, but have generally increased due to a weak pound. Uncertainty is certainly making the picture very unclear on the pricing side. Early indications would suggest there will be little impact to availability of fe

Following the latest advice for the Government, our team will only be making essential visits to farms and businesses until further notice. Where possible, we will use alternative methods to carry out our work, including conference calls, video calls and remote computer access. We realise that some visits to farms are essential, and we will continue to do this wherever possible on a case by case basis. Our team will take additional precautions, including the use of of h

At last it looks like there may be a few dry days coming. Fertiliser applications are all going to be late now so don’t just apply what you have done in previous years. A lot of leys and new reseeds will take some time to dry out enough to drive on without rutting them, and where there is already a good grass cover of 5-6” and the crop looks green you need to consider if your fertilise it at all. The fertiliser needs to hit the soil and where the grass is long much of it will

The application window for BPS 2020 has opened online today, and you can start your application at www.gov.uk/claim-rural-payments The deadline for applications is 15th May, but I suggest you start working on checking your data as soon as possible. If you need any help with your application, please contact us as soon as possible as we will be very busy in the run up to the deadline. If we assisted you with your application last year, we will be in touch shortly to arrange a d

As many of you will have seen in the farming press, there were a lot of announcements from Government last week about their plans for Agricultural policies going forward, particularly in relation to the future of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the new Environmental Land Management System (ELMS). There is a lot of information to digest so we thought it would be sensible to provide a summary of the key points for you. Basic Payment Sch