Agriculture: Standards

(asked on 15th March 2022) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to enable farms to carry out improvements required to be more (a) efficient, (b) productive and (c) environmentally sustainable.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 23rd March 2022

This is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Government announced a range of new schemes designed to help England’s farmers to enhance their efficiency, productivity, and environmental sustainability in the Agricultural Transition Plan of November 2020.

Environmentally sustainable farming is fundamental to our new approach to England's agricultural system. We are introducing three schemes that reward farmers for environmental benefits: the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery.

These new Environmental Land Management schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices, improving animal health and welfare, reducing carbon emissions, creating and preserving habitat, and making landscape-scale environmental changes.

Deploying new innovation and technology is key to boosting efficiency and productivity whilst also enhancing the environment.

Through the Farming Equipment and Technology Fund, we recently awarded grants valued at £48 million to over 4,300 farmers and growers. This will allow them to invest in equipment, technology and infrastructure so their businesses can prosper, improve productivity and enhance the environment.

Defra is also supporting farmers through the Future Farming Resilience Fund, which is an initiative to provide free business support to BPS recipients in England, to help them identify how they may need to adapt their businesses.

In spring 2021, Defra launched the £14.5 million Farming Innovation Pathways competition in partnership with UK Research and Innovation for 48 collaborative R&D projects aimed at bringing farmers, businesses and researchers together to develop new and existing farm-focused innovations.

We are building on this momentum with the launch of Defra’s new Farming Innovation Programme, which will unlock innovation and pull-through R&D to deliver solutions to help farmers and growers overcome challenges and make the most of new opportunities.

Defra has made £17.5 million available so far in the Farming Innovation Programme and we have seen a fantastic response from the farming sectors so far. More funding is planned to launch in the coming weeks and months.

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