BPS and Organic Farms

As is widely known, land registered as organic (including in conversion) is deemed to automatically meet the Greening requirement.  Full payment is made on this land without the need to follow the three Greening rules.  However, for those whose farms have a mixture of organic and conventional land, the interaction of the two types was unclear.

DEFRA has now received further clarification on this from the EU which answers many of the questions.  Effectively organic land and non-organic land should be treated as separate holdings for Greening.  This means that the organic land is ignored completely when calculating the arable area (and thus the greening requirements).  Only crops grown on conventional area can count towards Crop Diversification, and EFA cannot be sited on the organic portion of the farm.   

However the European Commission will allow farmers the choice to ignore the organic exemption completely and therefore the arable area would include both the organic and non-organic land.  Crop Diversification and EFA would then apply across the whole holding. This may help those farmers whose conventional land alone does not satisfy the crop diversification or EFA requirements.