Sustainable Farming Incentive Grants

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Countryside Stewardship is already an established agri-environmental scheme. Many farmers are used to it. Roughly half the farmers in England are in some type of scheme, either the high level or another tier. As those schemes come to an end, they will be able to transfer into the mid tier, local nature recovery or whatever it is called at that time—it is Countryside Stewardship-plus. What is really important is that there will be a seamless continuity. Within that scheme they will be able to do similar sorts of things to what they are already doing in Countryside Stewardship.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, the rollout of the SFI is extremely slow and, according to the NFU, only 849 farmers have so far joined the scheme—a fraction of the 5,500 that Defra suggested could apply. At the same time, the basic farm payments are decreasing year on year, having no regard for the extremely slow rollout of the ELMS replacement. Can the Minister say how the Government plan to support farmers now—not in two years—at a time when feed and fertiliser prices are rocketing, coupled with increased energy costs?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We are helping farmers with the latter point. First, the noble Baroness’s figure was not right; the number of farmers in the scheme is roughly double what she said. Secondly, we are helping farmers through bringing forward half their basic payment, which was an annual payment, to last July. We are doing a number of different things on energy. We are trying to support businesses, not just in farming but right across the board, with the spikes in energy costs. We are also rolling this out in a way that allows farmers to contribute to how the scheme is run. It is an iterative process. We have changed the schemes, working with people. There is a determination to see 70% of farmers operating within the sustainable farming incentive, the entry-level scheme, and many more in other tiers as time goes by. So I hope the noble Baroness will agree that this is the right way forward as we move away from the very unfair, anti-farmer, anti-small farmer basic payments scheme.