\ Donal O' Leary The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has released a new calculator to aid farmers in complying with the 5% reduction in nitrogen output required under the Beef Exceptional Aid Measure (BEAM). The calculator is hosted on the Department’s agfood.ie facility and is linked into an applicant’s animal identification and movement system (AIM), thereby allowing current levels of nitrogen output to feed automatically into the calculations. The Department had previously come under pressure for failing to provide farmers with additional tools to comply with the scheme. It should be noted that the new calculator relates to the original timelines and can be used in helping farmers to make up their minds about sticking with the original reduction year (1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021) or opting for recent flexibilities secured for a reduction year of 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.