Greening payments to support the climate and the environment

The objective of greening payments is to enhance the environmental performance of agriculture by promoting agricultural practices that are beneficial for the climate and the environment. The payment amounts to approximately €66–74 per hectare, depending on the farm’s location.

There are three requirements for receiving the payment: crop diversification, maintaining permanent grassland and having an ecological focus area. Organic farms are exempted from certain requirements. The ecological focus area, which may include, fallow land or leguminous crops and short rotation coppice, must cover at least 5% of the arable land. Exemptions from this requirement can be granted under certain conditions – for example, if a farm is organic or located somewhere else than in Uusimaa, Southwest Finland or the Åland Islands. The rest of the country is exempted from the requirement of maintaining an ecological focus area because the area covered by forest is large in relation to the area of arable land. The requirement of maintaining permanent grassland concerns farms with permanent grassland. Permanent grassland means arable land that is only used to grow grasses and is not renewed at least every five years by growing other crops than grasses for at least one year.