The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is calling on local farmers and growers to take part in an online survey to identify investment needs for farms, going live on Friday 27th October.
The ‘Attitude to Investment’ survey will help gauge the readiness of primary producers with an agricultural or horticultural business in Northern Ireland to invest in new capital equipment and infrastructure in the short to medium term, while seeking information on challenges and barriers across different sectors and sizes of farms.
Alison Chambers, DAERA’s Director of Sustainable Agri-food Development said: “There are a number of challenges facing the industry, both in terms of farm productivity and environmental performance. It is essential that we have sound information to develop the shape of new support measures to help address these issues.
“The new Capital Investment Measures will help farm businesses to improve business efficiency and environmental performance. In particular, support will be focused on assisting the industry to meet Net Zero targets to incentivise investment in carbon reduction technology and to invest in equipment to support low carbon farming.”
Alison added: “Therefore I would encourage all agricultural and horticultural producers in Northern Ireland to complete this survey.”
The survey is completely anonymous, and information gathered will only be used to inform the development of Capital Investment Measures under the new Farm Support and Development programme.
Farmers and growers are encouraged to complete the survey which is available from Friday 27th October on the DAERA website. The closing date for survey responses is Friday 17th November.
Notes to editors:
- The Capital Investment Measure is one of the measures in the new Farm Support and Development programme. It will aim to reduce the environmental impact of primary production sectors, through adoption of precision technology and equipment to reduce ammonia emissions, carbon emissions, and nutrient loss. In addition, it will seek to increase the resilience of farm businesses through increased efficiency, to help deal with the volatility of input costs and labour availability.
- Further information on Farm Support and Development is available on the DAERA website.
- The Attitude to Investment survey is hosted on Citizen Space, and is accessible via the DAERA website. All responses to the survey will be anonymous.
- Follow DAERA on Twitter and Facebook
- All media queries should be directed to the DAERA Press Office at: pressoffice.group@daera-ni.gov.uk.
- The Executive Information Service operates an out of hours service for media enquiries only between 1800hrs and 0800hrs Monday to Friday and at weekends and public holidays. The duty press officer can be contacted on 028 9037 8110.