ACRES LESS return: don't let it delay your advance

If the Low Emission Slurry Spreading action is in your ACRES contract, you owe DAFM an online return by Monday 2 November 2026. The portal is open now on MyAgfood, and you or your ACRES advisor can file it. Miss the date and your 2026 advance payment is delayed. DAFM can also drop the LESS action from your contract altogether.

::: official-advice-banner Checked on 20 October 2026 against DAFM's notice of 19 October 2026, the ACRES specification and the current ACRES rate card. Confirm your own figures with your ACRES advisor before you file. :::

Where this stands on 20 October 2026: DAFM opened the portal on 19 October and the return closes on Monday 2 November. The slurry season closed on 7 October, so the year you are declaring is finished and your figures are final. Nothing needs to wait for better weather.

What is the ACRES LESS return, and who owes one?

Low Emission Slurry Spreading is one of the general actions inside ACRES. You agree to spread all your slurry with a band spreader, a trailing shoe or an injection system instead of a splash plate. DAFM pays you by the cubic metre for doing it.

Because it pays by volume, DAFM cannot work out your payment from a map. You have to tell them how much you spread. That is the annual declaration.

It only applies if LESS was approved as part of your contract. If it is not in there, this date is not yours and your payment is unaffected. If you are not sure, your advisor can see your action list in minutes.

The return goes in on the MyAgfood platform. Either you or your ACRES advisor can complete it — unlike the Non-Productive Investment plans, which only an advisor can submit.

How do you work out your volume in cubic metres?

A cubic metre is 1,000 litres, or roughly 220 imperial gallons. That conversion is the whole job.

If a contractor drew it, the docket is your figure: loads multiplied by tanker capacity. A 2,000-gallon tanker is about 9.1 cubic metres, so ten loads is around 91. If you spread it yourself, count your own loads the same way.

For a rectangular tank, measure in metres. Length times width times the depth you emptied. That answer is already in cubic metres.

The minimum is 50 cubic metres a year, which is about 11,000 gallons, or six loads of a 2,000-gallon tanker. Spread less than that and the action does not pay for the year.

DAFM's specification tells you to keep documentary evidence of both the method and the volume, and to produce it if asked. A contractor's receipt does that job. So does your own written calculation of slurry produced, imported and spread.

What is the LESS action actually worth?

The current DAFM rate card puts low emission slurry spreading at €1.20 per cubic metre per year.

So 500 cubic metres is €600 a year. A thousand is €1,200. Over a five-year contract that is real money for a form you fill in once a year.

It sits inside your overall ceiling, not on top of it — €7,311 a year on ACRES General, €10,500 on Co-operation. If your other actions already fill that ceiling, LESS adds nothing. Our ACRES payment estimator works off the same rate card if you want to see where you stand.

What happens if you miss 2 November?

Two things, and DAFM states both plainly.

First, your 2026 ACRES advance is delayed. That is the bite. ACRES advances issued from 10 November last year. The first run paid €146.94 million to 33,794 Tranche 1 farmers, out of just over 53,700 in the scheme. A missing return means your case sits out of that run while everyone else's lands.

This is not a theoretical risk. When the Minister announced those payments, he was still asking farmers to send in outstanding LESS declarations. The returns were holding up the contracts behind them.

Second, DAFM may reject the LESS action from your contract. Not a penalty on this year's money — the action gone, for the rest of the term.

If your money is late for some other reason, the checks are in our piece on when ACRES payments actually land.

The three conditions that quietly make you ineligible

The return asks about volumes. It does not re-check the conditions you signed up to, and those are where farms come unstuck.

1. The stocking rate limit. Your holding must be under 100kg of nitrogen per hectare from grazing livestock manure. That is measured in the previous calendar year, before any manure is exported off the farm. DAFM's specification is blunt about the consequence. Exceed it and the action is ineligible for the entire contract, not just that year.

2. All of it, not most of it. Every bit of slurry spread on the farm has to go out by band spreading, injection or trailing shoe. That covers slurry you produced and slurry you imported, every year of the contract. One tankful behind a splash plate breaks the condition. Spreading also has to comply with the Good Agricultural Practice regulations; the specification names the 2022 regulations, which S.I. 588 of 2025 has since replaced. Our guide to the 2026 slurry and fertiliser deadlines covers the dates in force.

3. Pig slurry does not count. Only slurry produced on the holding is eligible for payment, and pig slurry is excluded. Imported slurry still has to be spread by a low emission method to keep you compliant — it just does not earn you the €1.20.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to file the LESS return myself?

No. You or your ACRES advisor can complete it on the MyAgfood portal. If your advisor has your contractor dockets, ask them to file it. Then get confirmation that it went in before 2 November 2026.

I spread less than 50 cubic metres this year. What do I do?

Talk to your advisor before the deadline rather than after it. The action needs a minimum of 50 cubic metres a year to pay, so a short year affects what you can claim. Leaving the return unfiled is a separate problem, and it delays your whole advance.

Who do I contact if the portal will not take my return?

DAFM gives three addresses, split by when your contract started.

• ACRES@agriculture.gov.ie — ACRES General contracts that began on 1 January 2023
• ACRESCP@agriculture.gov.ie — Co-operation contracts that began on 1 January 2023
• ACRESTranche2@agriculture.gov.ie — any contract that began on 1 January 2024

The bottom line

Find your contractor dockets, work out the cubic metres, and get the return filed this week. Last year's first advance run averaged about €4,300 a farm. That is what one unfiled form puts at the back of the queue.