LAST week must have been a very long one for Mark Grimshaw, head of the RPA, who had to announce a complete U-turn for Defra’s much-heralded online agricultural support system.

In his defence and during his years at the RPA, Mr Grimshaw has been highly-proactive and successful in turning round what was previously a pretty useless performance record for paying farmers.

The complete commitment to “digital by default” in a single year was not of his choosing, and he has had the common sense to pull the plug before it’s too late.

Whatever the excuses, many of us have spent days of wasted effort and costly time battling with a flawed programme.

Grimshaw has stressed that the core programme of the RPA known as SITA-AGRI, and on which all our farm data is stored, is working well.

Up to now we as farmers have provided information to the RPA who have then inputted that data onto SITA-AGRI.

This latest update was meant to provide an interface portal between SITA-AGRI and the farmer customers; but it has repeatedly gone down.

From a farmers view point the difficulty is exacerbated because more than 60 per cent of us were previously filling in our claim forms online and we are now being required to step back five years and fill in a paper copy.

Nevertheless, we are where we are, and going forward you need to know in simple terms what are the major steps in the process to complete a claim.

• The BPS online system has now been abandoned for 2015 applications and paper forms will be used instead. Blank BP5 forms are now available online but if you want a prepopulated version, these will be sent out in about two weeks.

• The deadline for submission of applications has been extended to Monday, June 15. There will be 50 drop-in centres around the country as we used to know them.

• It is important to remember that all the new BPS rules still apply.

• All farmers must still register online. This is not an option and if you haven’t done so already, make an appointment this week.

• Paper RLR maps will be sent out to you or your authorised agent if you have not received a recent copy within the last six months. You will need these maps to record cropping, split fields, ineligible features and ecological focus areas.

• Entitlement transfers and land changes will revert to being done on RLE1 forms which are available to download online. We do not yet know whether the RPA will require as previously, a six-week period in which to process RLE1’s and if so the deadline for submission will be Monday, April 27.

• There are four categories of farmers making claims. “Straight forward claimants”, estimated at 39,000 by the RPA, will receive an email confirming their presumed claimed details. If correct, confirmation of this email will be sufficient to make a claim. “Relatively straight forward claimants” are those with few field parcels and data to be entered on the BP5 and the RPA advice is to use the blank form. “Large farmers” with lots of field parcels and changes should wait for the prepopulated version to arrive. In “complex cases” the RPA will be offering tailored help to farmers and agents.

My very last comment for this week is to advise that just because the RPA has temporarily abandoned the sinking ship, complacency must not set in and you should head for the nearest lifeboat to continue the journey towards the June 1 deadline.

 

Farmers burning pork

THE French have a pretty unique and direct approach to public demonstration and the nation’s farmers have never taken prisoners.

I have not forgiven them for burning our lambs over 30 years ago.

And now they are at it again, setting light to a cargo of pork imported from Spain because they felt it was undercutting their prices.

 

Black grass vs grazing

WHEN I was a youngster it was not uncommon in the spring for sheep to be turned onto a field of winter wheat that had got too far forward.

With the withdrawal of effective chemicals, black grass has become a real problem.

Now new research is being carried out on a Suffolk farm to see if it can be controlled by other means.

Sheep grazing has been reintroduced and a mixed farming system rather than relying on the wholly arable rotation.

I will report on these results later.