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The Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine, Michael Creed today urged farmers to “ensure that they are compliant with all aspects of the BDGP for 2016, especially the requirement to complete a beef carbon navigator”. This is necessary he said “to facilitate timely issuing of the 2016 payment”.

The BDGP introduced in 2015 as part of Ireland’s Rural Development Programme is a world first in terms of bringing genomic technology to beef farming and can revolutionise beef breeding in this country and help to drive on-farm profitability while adding greatly to our national sustainability agenda.

A key additional 2016 compliance requirement is linked to the necessity to complete a carbon navigator with the farmers’ advisor. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has recently issued reminders to all BDGP participants instructing them to complete their carbon navigator before 31 October in order to facilitate both timely payment and the avoidance of penalties. Further details regarding the requirement to complete the carbon navigator can be found on the Department’s website at www.agriculture.gov.ie or by contacting the Beef Schemes Section either at 076 1064423 or by e-mail at beefschemes@agriculture.gov.ie.

Concluding, the Minister added that “completing this element of the programme will also ensure that all participating farmers have a better understanding of how to reduce their agricultural emissions per unit of output while at the same time improve their farm efficiency”.

Note to Editors
The Carbon Navigator is an online farm management package developed by Bord Bia and Teagasc. The navigator quantifies the environmental gains that can be made on each applicant’s farm. It is a very useful and simple tool which allows an individual farmer to look at changes which can be made on their farm in areas such as the length of the grazing season or their average calving rate.

Importantly, it then illustrates what that change would mean in terms of both reduced GHG emissions from the herd and the increased profitability associated with such a change.