The Complementary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS), popularly referred to among farmers as ‘front loading’, is designed to redistribute CAP funds from larger farms to medium and smaller-sized farms.
he basic premise behind the measure is that support through CAP should go to those who need it the most, or those who are contributing most to the CAP objectives, and that redistribution of funds from larger farms to small and medium-sized farms aids this objective.
It is proposed to allocate 10pc of the direct payments ceiling to CRISS. This corresponds to an annual indicative allocation of approximately €118m per annum, amounting to a total indicative financial allocation of approximately €590m for the period 2023-2027.
It is expected that this will translate to an average payment rate of approximately €43.14 per hectare, up to 30 hectares, though exact rates will fluctuate based on participation. Eligible beneficiaries are required to meet the definition of an ‘active farmer’.
Ireland will also apply degressive capping with the new BISS payment ‘effectively’ capped at €66,000. Any product from capping will be redistributed through the CRISS scheme.
Department modelling highlighted that the majority of farmers benefit, but those who have numbers of entitlements above the average, and those with higher-value entitlements, are more likely to be negatively affected, as it will be funded through a percentage reduction to every payment entitlement value.
CRISS was designed to partly address the need to support family farm income and directly addresses the need to reduce income disparities within agricultural sectors.
As seen in the ‘Where CRISS money is going’ table, 70pc of the CRISS budget will go to those with below 50 ha.
INHFA’s Vincent Roddy says CRISS will help to keep farmers on the land. “Those farmers who are working off a small number of hectares with high entitlements will get a top-up payment up to 30 ha. It is definitely going to support smaller farmers. The argument of CRISS affecting active farmers never stacked up.”
ICMSA’s Pat McCormack says that his organisation has always been in support of a redistributive element in the CAP as seen in our many CAP submissions.
"Our preference was a front-loading option that protected those farmers who has low overall payments but may have had high average entitlements. This was to protect them from the excessive losses suffered under convergence.
"While CRISS cushions some of those losses, it doesn’t protect those losing heavily through convergence. Those farmers will still lose more heavily than any other and in many cases, are totally dependent on farming for their income,” he said.