Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he plans to take to support family-owned farms with rising business costs.

Defra’s farming budget will be £2.4 billion in 2025/26. This will include the largest ever budget directed at sustainable food production and nature’s recovery in our country’s history: £1.8 billion for Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. This funding will deliver improvements to food security, biodiversity, carbon emissions, water quality, air quality and flood resilience.

ELM schemes will remain at the centre of our offer for family-owned farms and other farmers, with the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier and Landscape Recovery all continuing. These offer funding streams for farmers to make their businesses more sustainable and resilient, including those who have been often ignored such as small, grassland, upland and tenant farmers. We will work with the sector to continue to roll out, improve and evolve these schemes, to make them work for farming and nature.

This support forms part of the Government's New Deal for Farmers. The Government is also supporting family-owned farms and other farmers by protecting them from being undercut by low welfare and low standards in trade deals, by lowering energy bills for farmers by switching on GB Energy, and by using the Government’s own purchasing power to back British produce so that 50% of food brought in hospitals, army bases and prisons is locally produced or certified to high environmental standards.