Responding to questions raised by farmers and industry stakeholders, she said: “I am deeply concerned and opposed to suggestions that carbon auditing could be introduced as a mandatory condition for future farm support.
 
“The small print for 2026 Farm Sustainability Payments, linked to the new Sustainable Agriculture Programme (SAP),is severely lacking in clarity. DAERA officials have claimed that participation in the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme (SNHS) and the Bovine Genetics Project (BGP), a multi-million pound initiative led by Sustainable Ruminant Genetics, will be mandatory requirements.

“These latest proposals, if implemented, would compel farmers to participate in the Carbon Footprinting Project, a scheme tied to meeting the demands of the Climate Change Act (NI) 2022, and another heavy-handed imposition on the agricultural sector, driven by a flawed and unrealistic legislative agenda.”
 
The Upper Bann MP added: “Before any additional conditionalities are forced onto farmers, there must be full transparency about who is really driving these demands and why. For too long, there has been a clear and growing divide within the department, where an entrenched environmental ideology is being pushed at the expense of a sustainable agricultural agenda.

“These measures are not emerging organically from the needs of the industry, but from a policy mindset that is increasingly at loggerheads with the realities of food production and the livelihoods of farming families.
 
“Farmers in Northern Ireland are already doing their part investing time, money, and effort into meet environmental challenges. Carbon auditing must not be turned into yet another pointless box-ticking exercise, imposed by DAERA to satisfy political targets rather than deliver any real benefit to farm businesses.
 
“If this is genuinely being driven by the market, then processors and retailers need to stop hiding behind policy and say so openly and more importantly, be willing to pay for it instead of passing the cost down the chain to farmers,” she said.
 
The MP also warned that tying carbon audits directly to support payments would amount to coercion, placing unfair and disproportionate pressure on farmers who are already grappling with rising costs, volatile markets, and global uncertainty.
 
“Farmers need practical, proportionate measures - not unjustified and needless layers of red tape. They also deserve clear assurances about how their data will be used and what tangible benefits it will deliver to their businesses,” she added.
 
Ms Lockhart continues to urge Minister Muir and DAERA officials to work constructively with the industry.
 
“Our farmers are not opposed to doing their part, but they will not accept being dictated to by policies that ignore the realities of food production. Any changes must be driven by genuine market demand and developed with farmers not imposed on them. The priority must be to back our farming community, not side-line it or sacrifice it to an out-of-touch climate change agenda,” she concluded.