The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
The sustainable farming incentive is an important element of our new and improved offer for farmers through the agricultural transition. It pays farmers for actions that support food production and can help improve farm productivity and resilience, while also protecting and improving the environment. This includes actions relating to soil health, hedgerow management, providing food and habitats for wildlife, and managing pests and nutrients.
When adopted at scale by farmers, these actions will make a significant contribution to our statutory environment and climate targets, and also support our objectives to maintain food production and improve farm productivity. This includes our aim published in the environmental improvement plan of between 65 to 80% of landowners and farmers adopting nature friendly farming on at least 10-15% of their land by 2030.
We are taking an agile, incremental approach to rolling out environmental land management schemes as we phase out land-based subsidies. This involves working with farmers and acting on their feedback to refine our policies and schemes, as we recently set out for upland and tenant farmers. This is essential when delivering a complex and important programme of reforms.
As part of this approach, we have made a number of improvements to the 2023 offer based on learning from our pilot and the initial rollout of the scheme in 2022.
Today we are confirming the final details of the sustainable farming incentive 2023 offer, as well as the final detail on the SFI management payment, and how those already in the scheme agreements can access the offer this year. From August this year, we will accept applications for a total of 23 paid-for actions in the scheme. The application process is straightforward and quick, and we will pay farmers every quarter starting in the fourth month of their agreement. This builds on the prospectus published in January setting out significant detail across our new farming schemes.
We are introducing twice as many new actions this year as we originally planned and making the scheme even more flexible for farmers. As we introduce more actions, farmers will be able to upgrade their agreement to add more actions and add more land.
The offer includes a management payment to cover the costs of taking part in an agri-environment scheme, which particularly benefits smaller farms. It also includes an extra payment for farmers on common land to recognise the costs of managing agreements involving multiple parties on commons.
For tenant farmers, along with other improvements we have made in response to Baroness Rock’s review, there are short—three year—agreement lengths that do not require landlord consent, and those on shorter, rolling tenancies can join the scheme and leave without penalty if they lose management control of the land.
To allow a smooth transition to our updated offer, we have closed applications to the existing scheme (SFI 2022) until the new offer opens for applications in August. Those in our pilot, or already in an SFI agreement, can access the new offer and we will write to all agreement holders to advise them. This is part of our commitment to ensure that those who enter our schemes early are not made worse off by improvements we make as the transition progresses.
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