A campaign to boost afforestation, aimed at low-income drystock farmers and farmers with lower than average incomes from the EU Single Farm Payment, has been launched.
The campaign is focused on over 40,000 farmers, highlighting the income, environmental and amenity advantages to be gained from converting part of their farms to forestry. Part-time farmers seeking an enterprise with a low labour requirement are also being targeted by the joint initiative between the Department of Agriculture and the Irish Forest Industry Chain, the umbrella body for the industry.
While forest cover has increased substantially over the past 15 years, Ireland still has the lowest level of forestry in the EU. Just 10 per cent of our land area is under trees, compared to 38 per cent for the EU as a whole.
The National Forest Strategy had set a target of 17 per cent forest cover by 2030 and the campaign was aimed at reinvigorating planting to ensure that this target was met, said Mary Wallace, Minister of State at the department with responsibility for forestry.
She said that the economics of planting trees had never been more attractive than now. The concession, which allowed farmers to plant up to 50 per cent of their farms while still retaining their full EU Single Farm Payment, offered a real opportunity to thousands of farmers to significantly boost income.
George McCarthy, chairman of IFIC, said that more than 90 per cent of the 140,000 hectares of forestry planted since 1996 was owned by farmers and landowners, who now accounted for 0.3 million of the 0.7 million hectare national forest estate.
The project will involve an intensive information and advisory campaign at national and county level.