AgNav now decides 5c/kg of your Angus and Hereford bonus

From September 2026, 5c/kg of the Angus and Hereford breed bonus no longer depends on the animal alone. It depends on being signed up to AgNav and having three environmental actions selected. AgNav is a free sustainability platform built by Teagasc, Bord Bia and ICBF. On a 350kg carcase that 5c is €17.50 a head, so 30 cattle is about €525 a year.

Position as of 2 September 2026. The Certified Irish Angus structure took effect on 1 September. Irish Hereford Prime lists 7 September for its own, so that half is still days away. Rates below are as published by those two schemes and checked on 2 September 2026. Check with your processor before you plan a kill around them.

What actually changed

Both of the big named-breed bonuses have been rebuilt into three parts instead of one.

Irish Hereford Prime sets out its enhanced bonus as 10c/kg standard, 5c/kg genetics and 5c/kg sustainability. That is 20c/kg in total.

The Certified Irish Angus structure announced with ABP and Kepak matches it. €0.10/kg standard for animals passing inspection. €0.05/kg genetics for a recorded sire or a genotype. €0.05/kg sustainability.

The genetics part is about the animal. The sustainability part is about you. It is paid to members who are enrolled in AgNav and have taken on a minimum of three environmental actions. Hereford Prime names the sort of thing that counts: protected urea, liming, clover, cutting chemical nitrogen, low-emission slurry spreading. Those actions have to be completed by 2029, and you have to consent to your AgNav data being shared with the scheme.

So the bonus is no longer only a question of what walks onto the lorry. Part of it now depends on a file.

What is that 5c/kg worth on your farm?

Do this one on your own kill sheet rather than ours. The sum is carcase weight × €0.05.

Carcase weight	5c/kg sustainability	Full 20c/kg
300kg	€15.00	€60.00
350kg	€17.50	€70.00
400kg	€20.00	€80.00

Thirty eligible cattle at 350kg is about €525 a year from the sustainability part alone, and roughly €2,100 if you are collecting the full 20c.

That is real money for a form. It is also not enough, on its own, to pay for three actions you were not going to take anyway. Switching nitrogen product is a change of order. Low-emission slurry spreading means kit or a higher contractor rate. A liming or reseeding programme is a bill. Work out the cost of your three before you pick them, not after.

How does AgNav work?

AgNav is a sustainability platform for Irish farms. It costs nothing to use.

The important part for a beef farmer is where its numbers come from. Teagasc describes AgNav as drawing on the national databases already held by ICBF and Bord Bia. A single source of truth, in its words, so you are not filling the same figures in twice. Your animal records are already there. So are your Bord Bia sustainability survey answers.

From that it builds an emissions figure for your farm using an Ireland-specific model, then gives you two tools. The Forecaster lets you model what a change in management would do to that figure before you make it. The Action Planner is where you choose the actions, and where the three that earn your 5c get recorded. Out the far end comes an AgNav Sustainability Report for your farm.

Teagasc's note on AgNav's 2025 additions puts registrations above 17,000, with more than 11,000 sustainability action plans created.

What does it get wrong?

Two things worth knowing before you treat the number as gospel.

It is only as right as the survey behind it. AgNav does not measure your farm. It reads what ICBF and Bord Bia already hold about it. The fertiliser and concentrate figures you gave at your last Bord Bia audit were, for a lot of farms, a rough guess. Your footprint and your action plan are then built on that guess. Fix it at the survey, not in the dashboard.

Soil carbon is a blunt instrument for now. Teagasc says plainly that the soil carbon approach in AgNav is a simple Tier 1 method, with more complex approaches expected later. It also notes that some soils are sources rather than sinks. If your farm's story is a carbon-holding one, the current method may not tell it.

This is the same pattern behind every farm carbon calculator now landing on Irish farms. The output looks precise because it is a number. It is a model reading a database.

How do you sign up?

There are three routes in, and Teagasc lists them all as free.

1. Straight in at agnav.ie. For beef and dairy, you need to be registered with ICBF and to have completed a Bord Bia sustainability survey. If you have an ICBF login already, that is your login.
2. Through your processor. Thirteen dairy and beef processors have AgNav built into their own sustainability programmes, often with an incentive attached. If you are supplying ABP or Kepak under one of the breed schemes, ask them which route they want you on.
3. Through the Signpost Advisory Programme. Teagasc advisors will sit with you through it at no charge. If the dashboard is not your thing, this is the route.

Whichever you use, sign-up alone is not the bonus. You need the three actions selected in the Action Planner and the data-sharing consent given.

Where an AI assistant earns its keep here

Not on the sign-up. That part is a login and a form.

Where it helps is the decision the platform will not make for you: which three actions to take.

Open your AgNav action list and put your own figures beside it. Hectares. Current fertiliser spend and product. Lime status and the last soil sample. Slurry gear, owned or hired. Then ask an assistant to cost each candidate action on your farm and rank them by what they cost you this year.

Ask it to say plainly what it does not know, then check its arithmetic yourself. It is a calculator with good manners, not an advisor. The gap between the cheapest action and the dearest one runs to thousands, so the ranking is worth ten minutes. It also gives you something specific to bring to your Teagasc advisor instead of a blank page.

The same trick works on the report AgNav hands back. Paste the summary in and ask what each line means in plain English. It is the same job as getting AI to read your ICBF herd data. The data was always there. You just never had an evening to sit with it.

If cutting chemical nitrogen is one of your three, we have already been through what that looks like in practice.

Frequently asked questions

Does AgNav cost anything?

No. Teagasc describes it as a free, voluntary platform for farmers and advisors across Ireland. The Signpost advisory support that goes with it is free too. The cost is your time, plus whatever the three environmental actions you choose end up costing on the ground.

Do I need to be in a breed scheme to use AgNav?

No. AgNav is open to beef, dairy and tillage farmers on its own terms. The link to money is specific to the Certified Irish Angus and Irish Hereford Prime bonuses at ABP and Kepak sites. There, enrolment plus three actions is what releases the 5c/kg sustainability portion.

What happens if I sign up but never complete the actions?

The three actions have to be completed by 2029 under the Hereford Prime terms, so there is time. But the sustainability payment is tied to enrolment plus a plan, not to a login alone. Confirm the current condition with your processor rather than assuming, because these terms have already been restructured once this year.

The bottom line

Sign up, because it is free and 5c/kg is 5c/kg. Then spend the real effort on the two things that matter more than the registration. Get your Bord Bia survey figures honest. And cost your three actions before you commit to them.