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 encourage (a) farmers and (b) food producers to use sustainable farming methods in Wellingborough constituency.

Defra is investing in sustainable farming methods, in the Wellingborough constituency and across England, through our environmental land management schemes, in particular the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). The SFI aims to support the environment and food production, and it rewards farmers for practices that will help to produce food sustainably and protect the environment at the same time, while also providing them a reliable income for doing so. That is because we know that food production and nature preservation go hand in hand. Those practices will help to look after farms in the short and long term by improving soil health or mitigating the impact of extreme weather.

The aim is for the scheme to be flexible for farmers in both the actions that they can take and the land on which they farm. Rather than prescribing what farmers must do, they should have a menu from which to choose what works best for their farm and to their advantage. That is helping those farmers to make their businesses more sustainable.

What is more, Defra is listening to and acting upon farmer feedback about environmental land management schemes. In 2024, we are increasing payment rates for the SFI and Countryside Stewardship (CS) by an average of 10, increasing the number of actions on offer in our environmental land management schemes with up to 50 new actions, making schemes more flexible and easier to access, and continuing to prioritise an ‘advise and prevent’ approach across schemes and regulation, which will make things fairer for all farmers participating in schemes. We will begin to offer SFI and new CS Mid Tier and Higher Tier agreements through rolling application windows this summer with the first agreements starting from the autumn. As a result, applicants will get agreements quicker and earlier than the current annual cycle for CS agreements. These, and other changes, will make it easier for our schemes to slot into farm businesses, providing more money for farmers deliver change and ensure we get the scale and ambition we need to positively impact the environment.

We have already seen strong demand for SFI agreements, with 22,209 applications received and 21,243 agreement offers issued across England.