Further Greening Announcements in Scotland

The Scottish Government has published an updated Greening FAQ which includes more details on the management rules for Ecological Focus Areas.  In general, all EFA features must be in place by 15^th May each claim year, but each feature will have their own management prescription.  The full FAQ can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0045/00459521.pdf.  A summary is provided below.

Buffer Strips and Field Margins

Buffer strips must be adjacent to watercourse or water bodies and must be between 2m and 20m wide.  They can be cut but are not to be grazed.  Field margins must be between 1m and 20m wide with no agricultural production.  Hedges and ditches considered a landscape feature under GAEC (hedge under 3m wide and ditches less than 2m wide) on field boundaries will count as part of the field margin, i.e. they can be measured from the bottom of the hedge or the middle of a ditch. Cross compliance strips are eligible.

Note that Scotland is not using ‘conversion factors’ unlike England.  Therefore it is not the length of these features that is important, but their actual area (length x width).  This area is then multiplied by a weighting of 1.5 to arrive at the EFA area.

Catch Crops

The Q & A states that a catch crop must be ‘established on arable land between 1^st March and 1^st October’.  This seems rather vague to us, and poses a number of questions.  Not least does the catch crop have to be in place for all of this period?  if not, what is the minimum time it has to be in place?  Hopefully clarification will follow.

Catch crops are a mixture of two crops from rye, vetch, phacelia, barley, mustard, oats, alfalfa, or can be one of these crops under-sown with grass.  Game cover mixtures will also be eligible.  We await further management rules.

Nitrogen Fixing Crop

This will include alfalfa, beans, trefoil, chickpea, clover, lentils, lupins, peas and vetch. The management prescriptions are far more complex than those in England. To qualify for EFA;

• there must be at least two nitrogen fixing crops on the area, with the main nitrogen fixing crop not covering more than 75% of the declared nitrogen fixing crop area
• the crops must not be harvested before the 1^st August
• nitrogen fixing crops must be surrounded by a field margin where the crop is adjacent to the edge of a field, this must be between 1 and 20m wide and may also count towards the EFA. 

Fallow land must have no production. Fallow land can also be used for crop diversification purposes however it must be in place for at least 6 months in the claim year.