Electricity corridor concern for forest owners - IFA
There is a lot of concern amongst the segment of the farmer community who have planted parts of their land holdings in forestry over the proposals for corridors through forestry to accommodate overhead electrical lines, the Chairman of the IFA Farm Forestry Committee, Padraig Stapleton, says.
The process of providing ESB Networks with greater powers in vegetation management and to enable the Minister of Transport Darragh O’Brien, through his auxiliary post as Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, to set regulations on the dimensions and conditions of corridors whilst attaching particular responsibilities on landowners to maintain these passages through land, including portions on which trees are planted to propose these changes.
This follows a weather pattern that has seen the countryside being battered by several severe storms in recent years. An important element of Minister O’Brien’s proposed legislation is to establish the principles for compensating landowners.
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IFA: Shallow cultivation must go from Nitrates Action Plan
It is a matter that will be welcomed by tillage farmers that the framework of the Sixth Nitrates Action Plan includes the removal of the stricture that farmers must engage in shallow cultivation, the Chairman of the IFA Grain Committee, Kieran McEvoy, said.
“Since 2022, the mandatory requirement to cultivate at least 75% of stubble ground left over winter has placed a burden of significant costs for fuel, labour and machinery. Small farmers without access to appropriate stubble cultivation equipment are particularly affected,” he explained.
Now it appears that certain recommendations made by the Nitrates Expert Group, that there ought to be an increase in the area required for cultivation prevails, but “undoing the amendment exempting land destined for winter cropping from shallow cultivation would have been a retrograde step and one which would have caused a lot of confusion at farm level,” he added.
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