Qualifying claimants
3.—(1) Claimants shall be eligible for payments under the Tir Mynydd scheme if they:
(a)have submitted a valid area aid application that showed the existence of eligible land;
(b)have undertaken to continue farming at least six hectares of eligible land for five years from the date of the first Tir Mynydd payment; and
(c)have submitted a claim for livestock aid in relation to sheep or suckler cows or both during the year in which the Tir Mynydd claim is submitted; and
(d)apply usual good farming practices compatible with the need to safeguard the environment and maintain the countryside, in particular by sustainable farming.
(2) The eligible area is the forage land within the less favoured area as declared in the IACS area aid application for the scheme year,subject to the following provisions relating to land grazed by dairy cows.
(3) If, on the date of the Tir Mynydd claim, the claimant has available an individual reference quantity of milk, the area of eligible land is reduced in accordance with the provisions of this regulation.
(4) The reduction is calculated by reference to the number of animals in the notional dairy herd.
(5) The number of livestock units in the notional dairy herd is calculated by dividing the individual reference quantity of milk available to the claimant by 5730, being the number of litres of milk deemed to be equivalent to the annual production of one dairy cow.
(6) Such livestock units are firstly applied to that part of the holding that is not eligible land at the rate of one hectare for each two livestock units so calculated.
(7) The remaining livestock units not so applied are used to calculate the reduction in eligible land at the same rate, taking the reduction from disdvantaged land before severely disadvantaged land.
(8) In this regulation “notional dairy herd” means the total number of animals deemed to constitute the dairy herd on land farmed by the claimant in Wales as calculated above and “individual reference quantity of milk” has the same meaning as in Article 31 of Commission Regulation 2342/1999(1)).
O.J. No. L281, 04.11.99, p.30.