Sustainable Farming Incentive

Wednesday 12th March 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

With record numbers of farm businesses in farming schemes and the sustainable farming budget successfully allocated, yesterday the Government stopped accepting new applications for the sustainable farming incentive (SFI24).

Our environmental land management schemes will remain in place, including SFI, and there will be a new and improved SFI offer with more information in summer 2025.

Every penny in all existing SFI24 agreements will be paid to farmers, and outstanding eligible applications that have been submitted will also be taken forward.

Our vision is for a sector with food production at its core because food security is national security. We want farm businesses to be more resilient to shocks and disruption, and an agricultural sector that recognises restoring nature is not in competition with sustainable food production but is essential to it.

By pursuing these principles, we will support farm businesses to be more profitable, addressing the underlying problem that some farmers do not make enough money for the hard work they put in.

This Government inherited farming schemes which were underspent, meaning millions of pounds were not going to farming businesses. This Government are proud to have secured the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history, with £5 billion over a two-year period to sustainable farming and nature recovery.

We have left no stone unturned in our determination to get farmers into our environmental land management schemes. As a result, we now have a record number of farmers in these schemes with more than 50,000 farm businesses and more than half of all farmed land now being managed under our schemes.

The largest of these schemes, SFI, now has more than 37,000 live agreements in place. It is not only delivering sustainable food production and nature’s recovery for today and the years ahead, but putting money back into farm businesses.

However, this Government inherited an uncapped scheme aimed at mass participation of farm businesses, despite a finite farming budget. The high level of participation in SFI means we have now reached the upper limit.

Now is the right time for a reset: supporting farmers, delivering for nature and targeting public funds fairly and effectively towards our priorities for food, farming and nature.

We will take forward any submitted SFI application where the agreement has not yet started. If farmers have already submitted an application, they will receive an agreement. If farmers are in the SFI pilot, they will be able to apply when the pilot agreement ends.

The reformed and improved SFI will:

Deliver our vision of a sector with food production at its core, supporting less resilient farm businesses while ensuring nature recovery;

ensure we deliver value for money for taxpayers as we invest in sustainable food production and nature recovery;

have a clear budget set and put in place strong budgetary controls so that SFI is affordable;

better target SFI actions fairly and effectively, focusing on helping less productive land contribute to our priorities for food, farming and nature.

As we evolve the scheme, we will listen to farmers’ feedback to ensure we learn and improve for the future.

Our improved SFI scheme will be another step in this Government’s new deal for farmers to support growth and return farm businesses to profitability. In recent weeks we have already:

Extended the Seasonal Worker Visa Scheme for five years.

Outlined plans to back British produce across the public estate.

Protected farmers in trade deals.

Invested £110 million in farming grants to improve productivity, trial new technologies and drive innovation in the sector.

Made the supply chain fairer, including new regulations for the pig sector by the end of this month.

Invested over £200 million in a new National Biosecurity Centre to protect livestock from diseases.

The Government are committed to working with farmers and farm organisations to ensure future policies deliver in the best interests of farming for the long term. For instance, we are developing the first-ever long-term farming road map to understand the barriers facing farmers and identify ways to reform the farming budget so that it can best deliver for food production and the environment.

The land use framework will guarantee our long-term food security and future-proof our farm businesses, supporting economic growth on the limited land we have available.

I will be making an oral statement on this subject later today.

[HCWS514]