Professional services
How to make the Sustainable Farming Incentive work for you
EXPERT VIEW
Details are fi nally emerging of ways the government will pay farmers to look aſt er the environment, says Honor Eldridge
B
rexit created a unique op- portunity for the govern- ment to reform farm sup-
port. Now outside the confi nes of the Common Agricultural Policy, the UK has seized the opportuni- ty to create a new system that will require farmers to do more in re- turn for their money. The government’s new ap-
proach will pay farmers to deliv- er clean air, clean water and oth- er ecosystem services. Known as “public money for public goods”, it
will reward farmers for looking af- ter the environment and tackling the climate crisis.
It represents a profound shift in policy – and analysts have spent many years discussing how it might work. While Defra’s vi- sion for the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme is clear, the details are still only trickling out.
Does it stack up? A further glimpse of what it will
involve emerged last month when Defra published details of its pi- lot Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). In time, this will form the entry level of the ELM scheme and reward farmers for basic environ- mental improvements.
The pilot SFI outlines nine in- itial standards, each containing three levels – introductory, inter- mediate, and advanced – includ- ing payments. The intermediate level of the improved grasslands standard, for example, will pay £62/ha.
This allows farmers to start
seeing how the new system stacks up fi nancially against the current system of basic payments and countryside stewardship. But re- member, it is a pilot scheme and revisions are likely before fi nal terms are unveiled next year. Defra offi cially launched the SFI pilot in February 2021. It re-
ceived more than 2000 expres- sions of interest, indicating the level of interest among growers and livestock producers. Those farmers are now being invited to join the pilot itself.
Measures of success The success of the SFI will be de-
Agricultural Water Management
Sustainable water resource management Abstraction licence renewals
Borehole, reservoirs, surface abstraction, infrastructure, IT control Grant aid applications
Reservoir planning, construction and management
Water efficiency
OUR FOCUS IS ON YOU, YOUR BUSINESS AND THE FUTURE
Contact: Contact: Will Hosegood 01284 611900
WJH@brooksleney.co.uk
Chartered Surveyors, Land, Property and Planning Consultants
68 ANGLIA FARMER • JULY 2021
BROOKSLENEY.CO.UK
01263 733395 07785 935498
andrew.alston@
farmline.com
www.awmcl.co.uk
Water quality issues
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