Farmers urged to register land to get EU funds

Farmers were yesterday urged to apply for the €20 million worth of funds (Lm8.7 million) available to them as long as their farming practice complies with EU rules.

However, Parliamentary Secretary Frans Agius warned that farmers who have not registered their land would not be eligible for any EU funds until 2013, when a revision of the land registration system is due.

A public information campaign will be held in a bid to get all the land registered.

Farmers do not have to own the land to apply for the grants, which are non-taxable. But they must till it and employ sound agricultural practices and follow EU environmental directives.

Payments will be made through an independent paying agency. It may take between three and five months to vet the applications because the agency has to carry out an audit on about five per cent of them.

Some 30,000 spot checks were carried out last year and a number of farmers lost a percentage of their funding as they were not following EU guidelines. The paying agency was itself examined on eight occasions by the European Court of Auditors. There are 11 schemes under which farmers can apply. Grants range from Lm12 to Lm22 per tumolo of land for different types of field, but there are also grants for the production of fruit and vegetables which range from 1c to 5c per kilo of produce.

The sum of Lm450 per tumolo is earmarked for farmers planting vineyards while funds are also available to restructure existing vineyards. Grants for the repair of rubble walls are also available.

Application forms can be collected from Ghammieri and Marsa or from the IACS agriculture office in Gozo.

There are about 14,000 registered farmers, of whom only 1,524 are full-timers.