The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed today announced the re-opening of the Beef Data and Genomics Programme (BDGP). This will make the scheme available to beef suckler farmers who are not already members of the scheme.  The scheme will be known as BDGP II and will, like the original, commit to six years of payments to farmers for completion of actions aimed at delivering accelerated genetic improvement in the national herd and improvement of its environmental sustainability.

The scheme will require farmers to complete the same actions as in the original BDGP over the course of six years, starting in 2017 and concluding in 2022.  There will be a small change to the timing of the training and carbon navigator requirements. The Minister explained “From listening to the feedback from farmers in BDGPI, it became clear that the training and carbon navigator actions were found to be extremely helpful to farmers in understanding the actions that they would need to take in order to satisfy the requirements of the BDGP.   It is as a result of this feedback that I have decided to bring the training and carbon navigator actions forward to year one of this scheme.”

The scheme will be open for applications from next Wednesday 19^th April with a closing date of Monday 8^th May 2017, and further details on the application process are available by contacting the Department’s office in Portlaoise on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 076 1064423.

Payments to participants will be the same as BDGP I i.e. €142.50 per hectare for the first 6.66 payable hectares under the scheme, and €120 per payable hectare after that, with the same timing requirements for returning of data in order to ensure payments can go out to as many farmers as possible in December of each scheme year.