Claiming organic funding on your SAF

Single Application Form (SAF) 2022 – Deadline Monday 16 t May

With the SAF deadline fast approaching we must remind you to submit your Supporting Documentation for your organic claim, as well as evidence of your Greening Exemption. There are four important parts of the SAF you need to complete:

1.     To claim the Greening exemption (partial or full) tick the organic box at the start of the application

2.     If you have a current Rural Priorities (RP) or an Agri-Environment Climate Scheme (AECS) funding contract for organic conversion or maintenance funding, you must ‘tick the box’ under the ‘Contracts& Continuing Commitments’ section at the start of your SAF form to indicate you wish to claim your annual schemes payment:

‍IMPORTANT NOTE for Members who submitted an AECS application in 2021 and who are due to start conversion in 2022 even if you have not yet set a start date for conversion in keeping with the AECS rules prior to 16t May you still need to claim the first year of your organic conversion funding in this year’s SAF.

3.     For the current Rural Priorities or AECS scheme you will need to ensure the scheme option codes & claimed areas are correctly assigned to each field LPID included in the funding contract.  The RP/AECS scheme details SHOULD be pre-populated on your online SAF form. This is sometimes not the case and you will need to input the detail on a field-by-field basis manually.  

4.     For organic & in-conversion holdings you also need to upload your current valid organic certificate & accompanying Production Operation Sheet (POS) as supporting documentation to your SAF application on the rural payment portal.   For Members due to start conversion in 2022 get in contact as we can issue a supporting letter where a certificate & POS have not yet been issued (as conversion has not begun yet).

Please note SGRPID run checks against your annual SAF claim, your AECS contract and the POS, and it is your responsibility to ensure they are correct.  The POS is based on the information you supply in your conversion plan and at on the field cropping detail sheets at your annual SOPA inspection, so the information will be correct unless you have failed to inform OF&G Scotland of any field mapping changes.  

Your POS & organic certificate are emailed to you by your Certification Officer after your organic inspection.  Alternatively, if you have asked for postal comms hard copies will have been sent out to you.  As both are important documents you should keep them together & have them safely on file. Any issues with your POS or organic certificate must be directed to your Certification Officer as soon as possible; untimely requests cannot be guaranteed to be resolved by the SAF Deadline of 16th May 2022.  It is your responsibility to ensure the information you supply to OF&G Scotland and on the SAF is correct.

Remember funding payments are made by SGRPID a year in arrears.  

The full 2022 SAF guidance can be found on the Rural Payments website here.

‍