Sustainable Farming Incentive: Flood Prevention and Drought Resilience

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether funding will be available under the Sustainable Farming Incentive to permit farmers to undertake environmental measures for the purposes of flood prevention and drought resilience.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

The sustainable farming incentive will continue to support flood prevention and drought resilience. The streamlined SFI offer for 2026 includes actions that slow the movement of water during periods of heavy rainfall, keep soil covered and increase organic matter, which improves the soil’s ability to retain water. Applications will open in June this year for small farms and those without an existing environmental land management revenue agreement, and in September for all farms.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome that Answer and the information. I also welcome the department’s recently published independent report on flourishing uplands, which highlights graphically the tensions between farmers and environmentalists. It makes no economic sense at all for productive farmland to be flooded when farmers are providing 62% of the UK’s food. In those circumstances, does the Minister agree that there is a positive role for farmers to play, particularly in the uplands, in flood prevention and drought resilience? Will she therefore make sure that not just the SFI but all forms of environmental payments will look to putting livestock back on the land and making farmland productive and, at the same time, contributing to flood resilience and drought resilience?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is right: it is important that we recognise the role that farmers, land managers and landowners have in supporting the Government’s ambitions on flood and drought resilience, and that this should be delivered through any way that is practical and possible, while at the same time looking at continuing to support farm profitability.