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Shared Farming

Farm Policy

Collaborative farming/Partnerships

The Collaborative Farming Grant Scheme was introduced under the new Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 to encourage farmers, who are establishing farm partnerships, to adopt best practice by engaging the help of experts when drawing up the farm partnership agreement. The grant is aimed at covering part of the legal, advisory and financial services costs incurred in the drawing up of the Partnership Agreement.

The creation of farm partnerships has the following advantages:

1. Addresses issues of scale and efficiency within primary agricultural production by encouraging the consolidation of blocks of land held and operated by farmers not within the same family;
2. Employs new skills and specialisation in primary production through the required enhanced educational qualifications of the participants in the partnerships;
3. Improves the age structure of Irish agriculture by supporting arrangements that have at least one partner who qualifies as a young farmer (under 40), with priority being given to partnerships who also have a partner who is over 60 years of age
4. Brings added value to the new arrangement, with priority being given to those partnerships that bring the stronger economic potential to the new enterprise and to the economy.

The Scheme is open to all ‘brand new’ farm partnerships who have been placed on the Department’s Register of Farm Partnerships and who have been allocated a Farm Partnership Registration Number (FPRN). Former Milk Production Partnerships, either in whole or amended format, are not eligible for this Scheme.

The Scheme is operated in six-month tranches and the application must be completed online. On receipt of your online application, you will receive by return email, a confirmation email confirming same. Copies of detailed invoices and receipts for the legal, advisory and financial services incurred in the drawing up of the Farm Partnership Agreement must also be forwarded. On receipt of your online application, you will receive by return a confirmation email confirming same. The veracity of the payment receipts received will be checked through the relevant professional bodies.

The payment will be calculated up to 50% of the vouched (VAT exclusive) cost for each of the legal, advisory and financial services incurred in the drawing up of the Farm Partnership Agreement, up to a maximum payment of €2,500.
 
Further information is available here