Devastating blow for nature-friendly farms
UK Government's decision to immediately halt new applications to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), the country’s primary payment stream for nature-friendly farming post-Brexit, is a devastating blow for farmers and growers across England.
This comes after months of uncertainty within the farming sector, which was still adjusting to major reforms to inheritance tax, while recovering from the impacts of one of the wettest years on record.
The government has repeatedly acknowledged the need for a policy environment that enables the farming sector to produce healthy and nutritious food while supporting nature recovery and mitigating climate change. This announcement stands in stark contrast with that goal.
We understand that the budget is limited, and that the existing SFI left room for improvement, but the sudden closure of applications to the scheme will have a huge impact on farming businesses across the country, and risks eroding the sector’s confidence to transition to practices good for nature and climate. It risks England falling even further behind others doing more, such as Scotland and Europe, which have targets to increase organic farming.
Organic delivers for nature, and much more - it should be incentivised.
The conversion to organic farming, which has well-evidenced benefits for nature, could now be a particularly daunting shift for farmers and growers in England. The two-year conversion period - during which they must adhere to full organic standards but cannot yet market their products as organic – has historically been granted bespoke support. But the UK government only recently announced that moving forwards, farmers wanting to go organic should use the options available within the SFI. Now that these options have been frozen, it’s unclear how farmers will be supported in the conversion to organic.
New data released by Soil Association Certification highlights the growing demand for organic products – sales are up by 7.3% this year, the 13th year of consecutive growth. Retailers predict this trend will continue. Home production is lagging behind however, with only 3% of UK farmland being organic. By removing the financial support for new farmers to go through conversion, we are missing a key opportunity to scale up organic systems on home soils, and therefore missing out on the broad range of environmental benefits those systems deliver.
Small farms particularly vulnerable
But it’s not just organic farming that will be affected by this announcement. Small-scale producers, for example, were only recently granted access to the SFI, as the 5 hectare threshold was removed last summer. We know of many, who have spent months putting their plans together. Small-scale farmers and growers often lack the administrative support that their larger counterparts may have access to, and now won’t have the chance to fully explore the payment options available through the scheme, let alone start applying. This means that these producers, such as urban and peri-urban fruit and vegetable growers, are disproportionately affected by this decision, despite the social, environmental and nutritional value they provide to local communities.
The Government urgently needs to reinstate confidence and hope – the last thing we need is for farmers to abandon their plans to protect and restore habitats.
Another set of payments which only recently became available is the agroforestry offer. This offered to provide funding for farmers and landowners to incorporate trees into their farming system in order to capture carbon, improve soil health and water quality, provide resilience against flooding as well as shelter for crops and livestock. Trees take a long time to grow but deliver huge benefits – this is the type of long-term planning that farmers need support with. But with the window of opportunity being so limited for farmers to access those payments, few will have had the chance to apply - meaning progress in getting more trees into the farmed landscape is likely to be stalled.
The 25 Year Environment Plan outlines a target for '65-80% of farmers to adopt nature-friendly farming on at least 10-15% of land by 2030’ – and the SFI was designed to support farmers throughout that transition. Without these incentives, farmers who are delivering the most for nature, and supporting progress towards the government's legally-binding climate and nature targets, are at risk of being left behind.
Moving forwards, the Soil Association is calling for:
- Payments for organic conversion and maintenance to be retained.
- Farmers who started but had not yet finished their SFI applications to have those honoured.
- Priority to be given to smaller producers – who need them most.
- Payments for agroforestry, which had only just become available, to be retained.
Above all, we urgently need more coherence across food and farming policy developments, including the government’s upcoming Land Use Framework, the Farming Roadmap, and the Food Strategy. Now, more than ever, the content of these government policies must set the foundation for a sustainable, resilient food system, in which all farmers are fairly rewarded for the public goods they deliver.
