We have just finished several weeks of travelling around England with the Farming Advice Service (FAS), presenting at seminars for farm advisers on greening and the new online application and payment service for all CAP schemes, the CAP Information Service.
We’ve travelled to numerous locations between Cornwall and Newcastle over the last few weeks, with hundreds of agents and advisers attending and asking us questions.
We have collated all of the questions we received at the events and have been discussing them over the last week with colleagues. This will help us include as much information as possible in the next leaflet we are writing for all CAP customers, which is due to be published on GOV.UK and sent out in August. When it’s published, we’ll link to it on this blog.
It’s been quite a challenge; there are still a number of areas which either need clarification from the European Commission, or need to be worked out within Government. On one hand, we want to provide all of the information as soon as possible, however we must also make sure we provide the correct information to help farmers as best we can. We also need to make sure the Rural Payments Agency is able to administer the scheme correctly, to avoid disallowance from the European Commission.
Due to the popularity of the seminars, we are now holding an additional webinar for farming advisors who were unable to attend one of the recent events. The webinar is being held on Monday 21 July from 9.30am to 10.45am. If you are a farming adviser, register for it here.
On the webinar, we’ll explain the latest on greening rules and talk through case studies of farm businesses meeting the rules. There will also be a chance for Q&A on the new policy.