On Tuesday, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) confirmed the entitlement values for 2016’s Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), and payment rates for greening.

The Euro exchange rate that will be used to calculate all payments this year is €1 = £0.85228.

Entitlement values

Under the BPS scheme, farmers need to hold an entitlement for every hectare of eligible land they are claiming on. The size of farmers’ payments will depend on how many entitlements they use, supported by eligible land and the value of those entitlements.

Entitlement values are:

• €175.27 for non-SDA (Severely Disadvantaged Areas)
• €174.01 for upland SDA, other than moorland
• €45.97 for upland SDA moorland

Greening rates

Farmers must also meet greening rules to receive additional funding. The greening part of payments will be calculated by taking the number of entitlements that they have used with eligible land to claim payment and multiplying it by the greening value.

The greening rates are:

• €77.71 for non-SDA (Severely Disadvantaged Areas)
• €77.15 for upland SDA, other than moorland
• €20.39 for upland SDA moorland

Young Farmer Payment

Eligible Young Farmers, who applied, will receive an additional payment equivalent to a quarter of their entitlement value.

Further guidance can be found on the gov.uk site, here.

Financial Discipline Mechanism

The Financial Discipline Mechanism (FDM) deduction rate has been confirmed at 1.353905% by the European Commission. The RPA will now use this rate to calculate 2016 BPS payments by applying it to all payment amounts over €2,000. This will be used to create a reserve fund to support the farming industry in times of crisis, such as disease outbreak.