Agriculture Minister Michelle Gildernew has said the 'first-come, first-served' system of giving grants to farmers to modernise their businesses was fair.

The £6m funding package will allow only 1,200 farmers to benefit from the maximum grant award.

"We knew there was going to be no easy way," said the minister.

Some farmers had been in the queue since Sunday ahead of Tuesday's 0900 GMT opening.

"If we had done assessment panels it would have been a lot more bureaucratic and a lot more unwieldy," said Ms Gildernew.

The minister said two more sets of grants would be handed out to farmers.

The EU rural development programme grants are designed to help improve animal welfare and farm efficiency.

The farmers whose grant applications are successful will be able to buy from a government-approved list of items such as cow mattresses, creep feeders and computerised livestock identification systems.

If a farmer gets the maximum grant of £5,000, they must spend £7,000 of their own money on improvements to their farm.

Ms Gildernew said it was an "important boost to the economy", because many of the items on the approved list have been made in Northern Ireland.

It is understood the Department of Agriculture will allow a number of postal applications to be picked at random from the many thousands which are expected but the bulk of the grants will go to people who make it to the department's regional offices on Tuesday.

Farmers in Ballymena began queuing on Sunday afternoon in the town centre.