ICMSA welcome confirmation of crude protein banding inclusion on slurry export from milking platform

With the granting of the extension of the derogation last December to the end of 2028, one of the restrictions introduced was the verification of internal slurry transfers from the milking platform to ‘out blocks’ or non-milking platform lands – a restriction, incidentally, that flies in the face of the so-called ‘Simplification Agenda’.    

Eamonn Carroll, Deputy President of ICMSA and Chairperson of the Farm and Rural Affairs Committee, has stated that while farmers have until the year end to submit their records as to where they have spread on to non-milking platform land, it is important for the purposes of compliance that farmers record movements correctly and on time.  In this regard, ICMSA believe a number of changes are required to the Slurry Movement App to make it more farmer-friendly, beginning with an editable feature to rename LPIS numbers to field names – or if the land is in one block – that would simply be allowed to be renamed as a whole block.

Mr Carroll also confirmed that for the purposes of certainty and clarity,  ICMSA requested – and received – confirmation from the Department that farmers who choose the lower crude protein level in their concentrates will also receive the benefit of having to export less volumes of slurry internally.   This, said the ICMSA Deputy President, is a welcome and common-sense approach and it reflects the reality of the nitrogen content of the slurry being internally exported.

“The milking platform requirement has added another layer of complexity to what was already a convoluted process and ICMSA believes that the Department need to better communicate the requirements and, critically, adopt a common-sense approach where farmers make minor errors in their calculations.    It makes perfect sense and farmers are already exporting slurry to the non-milking platform land, so we think that the Department shouldn’t be penalising farmers for any minor errors in paperwork”, he concluded.

Ends     30 September 2026

Eamon Carroll, 
Deputy President, ICMSA
Or
Cathal MacCarthy, 
ICMSA Press Office